Rep. Mike Gallagher Takes Point on Covert CCP Bailout

by Frank Gaffney for American Greatness

As the Chinese Communist Party’s friends in the Biden administration and Wall Street mount a stealthy campaign to prop up that mortal enemy, a formidable opponent has emerged in Congress.

Fortunately, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) can do more than simply raise an alarm about China’s intensifying economic crisis and the political one it is precipitating. As Chairman of the House Select Committee on the CCP, he can help stop it.

In a powerful interview with the Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders News” program on August 23, Gallagher laid out a vision of the myriad challenges we face from the CCP and its “friends” in official Washington, and the financial sector, and what we must do to counter them. Highlights include the following points:

Don’t Invest in Military-Related and Human Rights Abusing Chinese Companies

“Reasonable people can disagree about where exactly you draw the line for economic decoupling from China, but no one, Republican or Democrat, would think that we should be allowing American money to invest in [its most dangerous] companies….In some meaningful sense, and in some very troubling sense, we are subsidizing our own destruction.

“American investors and people on Wall Street that have already made billions of dollars off of China’s rise continue to pour money into China and continue to lobby against Congress taking aggressive effort to reclaim our economic independence from China and to selectively decouple in key financial and economic areas.

“They’ve been all over Capitol Hill saying, ‘Hey, China’s open for business again. Xi Jinping has reversed zero-COVID. There’s an opportunity to continue investing. We can make money. We can go back to the good old days.

“It’s a total fantasy. How much more evidence do we need to understand that we are not dealing with a responsible stakeholder in the form of the Chinese Communist Party? We’re dealing with an increasingly hostile Marxist-Leninist regime that’s threatening war in the near term, and threatening to dominate the globe over the long term. That’s what we’re up against here, and it’s time to take off the golden blindfolds and have a more realistic approach.”

No ‘Bailout’ for the CCP; Instead, Focus on Deterring Its Aggression

“There should be no bailout talk. We need to keep up the economic pressure on China. We need to keep up the efforts to rebuild our military deterrent, because in order to work, our entire deterrent posture needs to be built on a foundation of solid, hard power. That’s where we are really struggling.

“The Biden administration is not taking aggressive steps to rebuild the Navy, and the Navy is getting smaller. We still haven’t replenished our stockpiles of munition systems. We need to be moving heaven and earth to ensure that Xi Jinping never wakes up and thinks he can actually successfully accomplish an invasion of Taiwan.

“If the CCP were to take Taiwan, it could hold the rest of the world hostage economically. Given the amount of trade that goes through the Indo-Pacific, and given Taiwan’s advantageous geographic position, if they were to take Taiwan, they would be able to do economic coercion on a much bigger scale than they’re already doing right now.

“Furthermore, we would be unable to fulfill our treaty commitments to key countries like Japan and the Philippines. All the more reason we need to be working very aggressively to deter such an invasion and to prevent a war. The best way to maintain peace is through strength, of course. Right now we don’t have a foreign policy built on American strength.”

Instead of Peace Through Strength We Have Complacency

“…The reality is we’ve gotten complacent. We believed this idea that after the fall of the Soviet Union, we were the ascendant superpower. We didn’t have to invest in our own defense. We could focus internally, and that we could somehow integrate China into the global economy, and that would moderate their behavior.

“That policy failed utterly and completely. Now, it’s taken us too long to take off the blinders and understand what’s actually going on. We need to shake ourselves out of our complacency. We need to stand up to this totalitarian regime before it’s too late, before we stumble into a war for which we are ill-prepared, or before we lose a cold war, which we’re not waging aggressively enough right now.”

No CCP Ownership of Strategic U.S. Land, Especially Absent Reciprocity

“Obviously, we don’t want to allow the Chinese Communist Party to control land near sensitive military facilities. Imagine if we were to get into a conflict with China over the defense of Taiwan, what they could do with that land. It would potentially give them the ability to shut off power, shut off normal workings at various bases, prevent our ability to surge men and material forward, or just simply conduct espionage on what’s going on at various bases. It is sensible for us to take steps to restrict such land purchases near military bases.

“As a matter of reciprocity, and as a matter of basic fairness, we should insist that such restrictions go forward, because Americans aren’t allowed to buy land in China. We continually open up the door for China because we’re good-intentioned Americans, but the door remains closed in China. It’s a non-reciprocal, asymmetric relationship. For too long, we’ve allowed the Chinese Communist Party to wage economic and cyber warfare against us to expand its espionage efforts against us without taking the necessary steps to defend ourselves.” 

What Are We Up Against?

“…This is a party state. This is a totalitarian, Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in which a small number of elites control everything and they oppress their own people. That stands in self-evident contrast to the republic and the system of self-government that we have in America. More to the point, just as Reagan constantly and brilliantly drew a distinction between the Russian people and the Soviets, we need to do the same today, because the Chinese people are not our enemy.

“The Chinese people are in many ways the primary victims of the Chinese Communist Party’s depravity. The more we make that distinction, the more we can blunt any accusations that being tough on the CCP is tantamount to anti-Asian racism, and the more effective we can be in terms of pushing back against growing CCP aggression. Because the one thing we know is that the CCP fears its own people more than anything else.”

The Select Committee’s Way Forward

“We have a series of policy recommendations that are coming out in terms of our military competition, our economic statecraft, and our ideological competition. We’re hoping to generate support for a sensible set of policies that put us on a better footing as a country, and that ultimately ensures that we win this competition.

“We’re in the early stages of a new Cold War, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. I think we can win it. We can win it without resorting to actual war, but it’s going to require a lot of energy, and a lot of sacrifice, particularly on the part of our elected officials.”

Rep. Gallagher’s clarity on our time’s existential threat to freedom is needed now more than ever. It must inform and impart fresh energy to the work of his Select Committee and result in specific legislative and financial impediments to any bailout of the CCP with American investment dollars or taxpayer funds.

X22, And we Know, and more- August 30

 

Masks and Jabs – I Will Not Comply

We cannot again surrender our 

constitutionally guaranteed freedoms

by Jim Nelles for American Greatness

There is an old Chinese curse that loosely translates to “may you live in interesting times.” It seems that today, we certainly do.  

We have a former president who is being persecuted by his political opponents, facing four different indictments, and more than 90 felony charges, which, if convicted on all counts, would essentially be a death sentence.

We have a sitting president who appears to be both corrupt and “owned” by foreign powers, given what the investigation of House Oversight Committee Chairman, James Comer has uncovered: bribe taking, influence peddling, a plethora of shell companies, unexplained bank accounts, email accounts under multiple pseudonyms, and apparent coordination with the Department of Justice in the persecution of former President Trump.

President Biden desperately needs a distraction. Something, anything that will take the focus away from his mounting scandals, his failing physical and mental health, and the general malaise the nation is feeling. He needs something fast, before the election. Something to ensure that he is reelected to serve as someone’s puppet president. They have found it. COVID and mask mandates.

Several institutions have quietly reinstated mask mandates, including two major hospitals in New York, health care company Kaiser Permanente, for its Santa Rosa, California facilities, movie studio Lionsgate and a small liberal arts college in Georgia. That college, Morris Brown College, also limits events on campus.

What is “technically” driving this return to the forced masking of people? Health authorities are tracking the spread of three new COVID-19 variants, now spreading across the country.  Levels of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths have been climbing steadily for the past several weeks.

There were a total of 10,320 patients in the United States who were newly hospitalized with COVID the week ending August 5, 2023, an increase of 12.3% from the week before. Levels remain far below the summer peak that “strained hospitals at this time last year, when 42,813 admissions were reported the week of August 6, 2022.” But that was before the 2024 presidential election cycle had begun, so there was no discussion of mask mandates.

By comparison, approximately 1 million adults in the U.S. seek hospital care due to pneumonia every year, and 50,000 die from the illness each year. That equates to 19,231 hospitalizations and 962 deaths from pneumonia each week…with no discussion of a national emergency, no lockdowns, no mask mandates.

On Friday, August 25, President Biden said he is planning to request more money from Congress to “develop another new coronavirus vaccine.” He stated, “I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to the Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works.” He added that it is “tentatively” recommended “that everybody get it,” once the shots are ready.

I wonder how much of this has to do with the fact the Pfizer’s stock price is down by more than $14 this year, falling from $51.26 on January 3 to $36.38 on Friday, August 25, a decrease of nearly 30%. Moderna’s stock is down nearly 38% year to date.

So, we are in a situation where the president’s poll numbers are in the toilet, his political rival has never been more popular, despite four indictments, big pharma is seeing its market value erode in record proportions, and now COVID is back. Corporate media friendly to the Biden administration are also calling for people to mask.

I will not mask. I will not take the jab. We cannot have a repeat of 2020 and 2021 where we all readily gave up our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and empowered the government. I will not comply.

Despite Democrats’ Fearmongering on Firearms, A Majority of Americans Own Guns or Want to Own Guns

Jordan Boyd reporting for The Federalist 

A majority of Americans are happy or prospective gun owners who keep firearms around to protect themselves, Pew Research found in its latest poll.

The poll, which surveyed 5,115 U.S. adults in June, found that, contrary to Democrats’ anti-gun rhetoric, Americans across all demographics enjoy exercising their Second Amendment rights by personally owning guns or living with someone who does.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans either already live in a household with a gun or have expressed interest in buying a gun in the future. Considering the U.S. is experiencing the highest personal gun ownership uptick since 2011, even those who aren’t firearm owners yet could be soon.

When Pew measured Americans’ attitudes towards guns in 2017, only 67 percent of firearm owners said they had guns for protection. After years of soaring gun sales due to rising crime and the summer 2020 riots, 72 percent of American gun owners now say protection is the primary reason they keep firearms around.

Overall, 81 percent of gun owners say owning a firearm makes them feel safer. A majority of non-gun owners, 57 percent, say they also feel safer if someone in their household owns a gun.

“Gun owners express overwhelmingly positive sentiments about owning a gun, with sizable majorities saying it makes them feel safer and that they enjoy having a gun,” Pew noted.

Safety is likely one of the reasons gun ownership among women specifically has climbed in recent years. In 2017, only 22 percent of women said they personally owned a gun. Now, 25 percent of females have a firearm of their own.

Gun ownership, Pew found, is still higher among rural, Republican voters than among urbanites and Democrats. The latter groups, however, saw increases in gun ownership in the last five years. Between 2017 and now, firearm ownership among urban dwellers jumped 1 percent.

Approximately 4 percent more blue voters say they have guns now than they did in 2017. Six percent more Democrats have guns in their household in 2023 than they did in 2017.

Pew tried to overshadow their robust gun ownership report by highlighting that 61 percent of Americans think it is too easy to get a gun in the U.S. What the poll did not specify is exactly how law-abiding Americans feel about leftist-led legislation that seeks to restrict their Second Amendment rights.

Despite the fact that deadly mass shootings increased during Congress’ 1994 ban on “assault weapons,” Democrats, led by President Joe Biden, desperately want another ban on the most popular semi-automatic rifles on the market.

“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said in November 2022. “It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”

There are a myriad of problems with blue politicians’ unconstitutional gun-grab policies. One such problem is that if Democrats pass a federal ban on AR-15s, they would be depriving Americans of the ability to protect themselves in the they choose.

The Pipsqueak 5.56mm, the AR-15, and Relative Power Levels

posted by Ward Clark at RedStateVIP 

In the history of the “assault weapon” debate, there has been a lot of squawking from the anti-gun Left about the “horrific wounding power” of the AR-15-pattern rifles and their standard 5.56mm round. Here’s the problem with their assertion: As usual when discussing firearms, the anti-gun Left has no idea what they are talking about. In reality, the 5.56mm round is kind of a pipsqueak compared to a lot of rifle cartridges in common use, especially those intended for big game hunting.

First, let’s look at the basic stats for the AR-15 platform’s usual load, the 5.56mm round, and compare it to the AK’s 7.62x39mm and the United States’ first modern military rifle cartridge, the venerable .30-06. Note: MV = Muzzle Velocity, ME = Muzzle Energy.

Cartridge	MV	ME
5.56mm 55 grain M193	3240	1282
7.62×39 123 gr spitzer	2300	1445
.30-06 150 gr spitzer	2910	2820

Looking at that, if the first two rounds are your primary basis of comparison, I can see how you might think that the .30-06 rolls out some impressive power levels, and in this perspective, it does; the standard mil-spec loads for the venerable old Cartridge, Rifle, Caliber .30, Model of 1906 are tough stuff put up against a typical AR or AK-platform round. And, yes, most standard police/military vests are weak sauce when taking on an ’06 round. But how does the ’06 itself stack up against some sporting cartridges that are in wide use? And bear in mind I’m not comparing the latest, hottest Eargesplitten Loudenboomer Ultra Magnums that the gun magazines seem to monthly tout; these are rounds that have been in wide use in the game fields for decades.

Let’s compare that to a couple of rounds that I shoot and load regularly: the .338 Winchester Magnum and the .45-70 Government.

Cartridge	MV	ME
.338 Win Mag 265 Grain LRX	2800	4200
.45-70 Government 405gr FN	1680	2274

Note that the .45-70 load I cite here is the standard, original black-powder spec load, and so the velocity and energy are low, lower than the .30-06, although I can tell you from personal experience that those big, flat-nose bullets pack a pretty good wallop inside of 150 yards or so and will put down a big, corn-fed Midwestern whitetail right the hell now. But look at the .338 load, this being the load I’m running through my own .338 Win Mag right now; that one comes pretty close to matching the .30-06 on velocity but, due to the heavier slug, produces almost a ton more muzzle energy, almost quadruple the 5.56 round.

To finish up, let’s really turn up the pressure: Here are the stats for the grand old .375 Holland & Holland Magnum and the .458 Winchester Magnum.

Cartridge	MV	ME
.375 H&H 270-grain solid	2690	4340
.458 Win Mag 500 gr solid	2090	4850

While the .375 H&H is a rung or two up the ladder from my .338 handloads, it’s in the same ballpark. But the .458 Win Mag? That’s an elephant-stopper, made as a dangerous game round, turning in almost two and a half tons of energy at the muzzle.

Sporting rifle cartridges, as you can see, routinely turn in some impressive ballistics, compared to the 5.56mm and 7.62x39mm rounds, and if you consult the benchmark work on such things – that being W. Todd Woodward’s annual Cartridges of the World – you’ll see that there are many, many such cartridges in standard production, and even more in the obsolete, proprietary and wildcat realms.

There’s a good reason for this. Mil-spec rifle cartridges aren’t necessarily designed to kill, RHEEEEing by would-be gun-grabbers notwithstanding. They are primarily designed to allow the individual soldier to carry a good supply (I wouldn’t prefer to carry around seven thirty-round mags full of .45-70 loads) and, when applied as intended, to take an enemy soldier out of action.

Sporting rounds, on the other hand, are designed to kill – animals that are, quite often, bigger and tougher than humans. In fact, some of them, including the big Alaskan moose and grizzlies that are often found within a few miles of where I sit at this moment, are a great deal bigger and tougher. Those kills are also often made at some distance; shots out to 300 yards are not all that unusual. (My personal record is a 280-yard shot on a Colorado mulie, and yes, that was with my .338.) More to the point, sporting rounds are designed to deliver a quick, clean, humane kill, which means one must, as Robert Ruark so famously put it, “use enough gun.”

Modern military cartridges are not in the same ballpark as anything much past mid-range when it comes to sporting rifle cartridges. It’s very nearly a difference of kind, rather than a difference of degree; the difference when you’re comparing some of the tougher loads is in orders of magnitude. And it’s not as though any of the rounds I’ve described here are the Hot New Thing; aside from the 5.56mm, the most recently introduced rounds I’ve described are the .338 Win Mag and the .458 Win Mag, which both first hit the market in 1958.

Let’s hope the current crop of nitwits in the Democrat Party don’t figure that out because next, they’ll be raving about “sniper rifles” and “armor-piercing ammo.” Meanwhile, the “assault weapon” issue will continue to be litigated, and the people pushing for bans on such will still have no idea what they are talking about.

Mark Thompson: CNN appoints former BBC director general as chief executive

 

Ex-BBC and New York Times boss Sir Mark Thompson has been appointed to lead CNN following a series of crises and falling ratings at the US news network.

Sir Mark replaces Chris Licht, who struggled to stabilise CNN in his 13 months as chairman and CEO.

The network has also been through the firings of star anchors Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon, and the closure of streaming service CNN+ after just one month.

Sir Mark must also guide CNN during the 2024 US presidential election.

That challenge will coincide with coverage of criminal charges against Donald Trump.

The network has had a famously tempestuous relationship with the former US president, who unsuccessfully tried to sue CNN for defamation, claiming it had created a "false and incendiary association" between him and Adolf Hitler following the last election.

A CNN interview with Mr Trump in May was widely criticised, including by the network's own Christiane Amanpour. Mr Licht stepped down weeks later.

CNN's previous boss Jeff Zucker had been forced to resign in February 2022 after failing to disclose a romantic relationship with a senior executive.  

'Pivotal time'

David Zaslav, chief executive of parent company Warner Bros Discovery, described Sir Mark as "a formidable force for CNN and journalism at this pivotal time".

He added: "Mark is a true innovator who has transformed for the digital age two of the world's most respected news organizations."

The British executive was director general of the BBC from 2004 to 2012, and is credited with reviving the fortunes of the New York Times by boosting digital subscriptions as president and CEO from 2012 to 2020.

"I can't wait to roll up my sleeves and get down to work with my new colleagues to build a successful future for CNN," Sir Mark said.

His appointment comes days after Warner Bros Discovery announced a new attempt at launching a CNN streaming service, CNN Max, which will combine existing shows with online-only programming.

CNN's cable TV ratings have been dropping faster than those of its competitors, according to official figures quoted by the Associated Press earlier this year.  

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-66656093   

New Education Standards Force Gay History, Climate Alarmism, And ‘Math Identity Rainbows’ On Students

Education standards have devolved, in several states, into a free-for-all of cramming woke nonsense into every corner of curriculum.

Angela Morabito reporting for The Federalist

While most schools were closed for summer break, several state education departments were hard at work crafting new curricular frameworks that will shape what students learn in K-12 schools for years to come. What should be a straightforward exercise in setting high academic standards has devolved, in several states, into a free-for-all of cramming woke nonsense into every corner of curriculum. 

These frameworks tell school districts and teachers what students ought to learn and when they ought to learn it. For instance, a state education authority might decide that students should know enough about America to name the president and vice president in second grade, explain the three branches of government in fifth grade, and explain how a bill becomes a law in eighth grade. Sadly, the latest batch of education plans are so full of politics that actual learning loses out. 

For instance, California’s new math framework encourages “teaching toward social justice.” Sample classroom activities include “math identity rainbows,” in which students choose colors that represent their individual strengths to create an image of a “mathematical community.”

The math plan prioritizes equity over, well, math to such an extent that academia has taken action. As the framework was being crafted, more than 1,700 academics in the STEM fields signed an open letter decrying the lack of options for advanced students to receive advanced math instruction. Their letter also laments the setting aside of algebra and geometry, expressing concern that students will arrive at college ill-prepared to handle post-secondary mathematics. 

New Jersey is currently considering new English language arts and math standards that indoctrinate children about climate change for the purpose of spurring leftist activism. The standards declare that the rising generation of New Jerseyans must have the skills to “create alternate discourses to change the present and shape the future.” If the end goal were not obvious enough, the standards also demand that teachers help students “become involved in the issues of our age, which include climate change and environmental justice.” 

Massachusetts, too, has an objectionable framework, this one for health. Its draft standards would have middle schoolers learn the difference between sex and so-called gender identity. The document describes sex as “assigned” rather than biological, implying that sex is not intrinsic but grafted onto a person’s identity when the doctor says, “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” in the delivery room. Parents have the right to opt their children out of sex ed lessons, but “please don’t indoctrinate my child” is not a special favor parents should have to ask for from the government. It should be the norm. 

Perhaps no subject is so ripe for the cultural revolution as history. D.C.’s newly adopted standards inflict far-left politics on the capital city’s young minds. Students will learn “histories of same-sex relationships” in second grade and the history of the “Latinx resistance” movement in America in fifth. The standards call for detailed instruction on many historical evils; the word “resistance” appears at least 40 times in the new document. But other historical evils are nearly ignored; the word “communism” or “communist” appears only eight times; “socialism” appears four times, and “Nazism” appears twice. Eighth graders will soon be able to take an “Action Civics” course — a topic that trains students to be activists for leftist causes. 

The processes for creating these documents are years-long and deliberative, as they should be, but those traits also make such processes incredibly opaque. Most people never think about statewide educational frameworks. Public education bureaucrats like it that way. 

Most parents have no idea what an educational framework is or what it means for their students. They should not have to understand the intricacies of curricular frameworks any more than one who flips on a light switch should need to know how electric circuits work. Schools should provide a decent education just like a light switch should turn on a light. But public education has blown a fuse, and now it’s on all of us to look at the wiring to fix the problems. 

When parents find out what’s in the curriculum, many are justifiably unhappy with the content. Pennsylvania parents and educators are suing the state’s education authority over its “culturally responsive teaching” guidelines, which instructed teachers to “believe and acknowledge that microaggressions are real.” That’s right, the state Department of Education is telling teachers exactly what to believe and to share that belief with students. Ideas this rotten should never make it past the drafting table, but they become academic standards thanks to activist education bureaucrats. 

The ideal solution is, first, to stop these frameworks before they are enacted by ensuring that people in positions of power prioritize student learning over their attempts to hijack education in service of their extreme ideologies. Next, parents should have total transparency around school curriculum and the freedom to choose where their child will learn. If public schools are going to be crammed full of indoctrination at the expense of real learning, parents deserve to be able to send their children to places that have their priorities straight. 

Shocking Report on Who Funds the Associated Press Raises Big Questions About Its Credibility

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

To put it lightly, the Associated Press is terrible. Once touted as a reliable wire service that just focused on hard news, the news outlet has become nothing more than another left-wing mouthpiece. 

One recent example, which RedState reported on Tuesday morning, involved a hit piece on Ron DeSantis in which the AP suggested that the governor's "rhetoric" was somehow responsible for a crazy person shooting and killing three black people. Expectedly, no actual "rhetoric" was cited in the article to prove that contention. 

That's the kind of hard-hitting coverage you can expect from the AP these days, and a new report is shedding some light on why that is. According to the Free Beacon, the left-wing outlet's top donors support some very interesting causes. 

The Associated Press, the country's top wire service, is now bankrolled in part by millions of dollars from left-wing foundations, including one founded by "1619 Project" author Nikole Hannah-Jones.    

The news organization last year announced a series of "partnerships" to subsidize reporters covering climate change, race, and democracy. A review of the donor roster shows that the vast majority fund left-wing political causes, while none are supporters of conservative initiatives.

One donor, who gives to the AP's "democracy journalism initiative" (an Orwellian name if there ever was one) is heavily bankrolled by the Johnathan Logan Family Foundation. That same organization has propped up Stacey Abrams' "New Georgia Project" and backed "Take Back the Court," a far-left entity that seeks to remove conservative justices by pushing false propaganda.

 The Associated Press is also taking nonprofit money to fund coverage of race and climate. The organization's "democracy journalism initiative," a division whose reporters cover "the intersection of race and voting," is bankrolled by nonprofits such as the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. That organization also funds Stacey Abrams's New Georgia Project and the left-wing activist group Take Back the Court, which advocates for expanding the Supreme Court.

To be sure, there's every reason to believe these infusions of cash are influencing what the AP writes. As the Free Beacon notes, multiple articles have been written pushing left-wing narratives about the Supreme Court, including the idea that the Supreme Court is disenfranchising black voters.

A recent AP article on the topic asserts that the Supreme Court in a 2013 landmark decision "tossed out the heart" of the Voting Rights Act, when in reality the Court ruled that nine southern states would no longer have to "pre-clear" election law changes with the federal government. The AP lamented in another story that "far-right conservatives" in Tennessee were elected to city council seats. A February news report said that "GOP election tactics" intentionally disenfranchised black voters in Wisconsin.

Another donor to the AP is the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. That same foundation gave $3,000,000 to ProPublica, which has been waging an ongoing war against the conservative justices on the Supreme Court, including pushing stories about justices like Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas that range from misleading to outright false. 

These are the people funding the AP, and that makes the news organization completely untrustworthy as a source. Remember that the next time you see some hit piece that makes no sense. There's an army of left-wing donors likely behind it.

With No Good Options, China’s Xi Jinping Turns Up the Temperature in the Taiwan Strait

Taiwan needs to stand up a local defense force system that could immediately mobilize to defend nearby key points.

Chuck DeVore reporting for The Federalist

China’s supreme leader, Xi Jinping, can’t be happy right now with his mounting troubles at home and abroad.

The nation he rules is under increasing economic pressure, much of it made worse by his Bigfooting into both domestic and foreign businesses; it appears uninvited Chinese Communist Party interference is both unwelcome and bad for business.

Internationally, the “wolf warrior” diplomacy he encouraged his ambassadors to unleash on their host nations has backfired spectacularly. Instead of cowing countries in its immediate neighborhood, being bellicose has had the opposite effect, driving South Korea and Japan to work together, and pushing Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia away from Beijing. The Philippines is even working militarily with America once again.

Regarding Taiwan, China’s constant military drills around the island appear no longer able to influence public opinion on behalf of the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, the old party of Chiang Kai-shek, which is, paradoxically, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) favored party in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s next presidential election is slated for Jan. 13, 2024. The candidate of the party Beijing loathes the most, William Lai of the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP) and Taiwan’s vice president, just wrapped up a successful trip to the U.S. on Aug. 19. The reaction of China’s armed forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), was unexpectedly muted — until a week later, when it sent nine naval vessels and 32 combat aircraft aloft in the vicinity of Taiwan, 20 of which crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait.

A military jet flying at 900 mph would reach Taiwan’s coastline only three minutes after crossing the midway point between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan. That doesn’t leave a lot of time to decide as to whether an actual attack is starting.

More ominously, one of China’s six nuclear-powered attack submarines was said to have sunk with the loss of all of its crew in the Taiwan Strait around the same time Lai flew home. This may have accounted for the delayed PLA reception for Lai.

Despite, or because of, China’s constant saber-rattling, Taiwan’s ruling party — the party that tilts the furthest toward de facto independence from China — keeps gaining in the presidential polls. Should Lai win in January, it will mark the third consecutive election victory for the DPP.

Taiwan’s Ability to Fight

Further, polling of Taiwanese citizens shows them to be drifting ever apart from communist China. Today, some 70-80 percent of Taiwan’s 24 million people consider themselves Taiwanese. A generation ago, the majority of the islanders viewed themselves as Chinese or both Chinese and Taiwanese. In addition, almost three-quarters of Taiwanese say they would be willing to fight if communist China invades.  

But saying you’re willing to fight and actually taking up arms are two different things. Due to longstanding distrust of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party toward indigenous Taiwanese and those with roots in the mainland whose ancestors arrived centuries earlier, combined with a general lack of respect for military service, Taiwan never developed a serious army reserve system — the sort of territorial army or National Guard found in the United States, the United Kingdom, and even Ukraine. This means that if Chinese forces gain air superiority, sink most of Taiwan’s small navy, and manage to get soldiers ashore in an amphibious assault, there won’t likely be much in the way of backup for the outnumbered army.

China’s constant practice runs against Taiwan present a huge risk to this Taiwanese weakness and reluctance to increase its mobilization by potentially reducing warning time. 

Taiwan’s 2.2 million reservists look impressive on paper. But prior to 2022, they only drilled four or five days a year — mostly sitting around listening to lectures and filling out paperwork. Last year, training was increased for some reservists to 14 days. By comparison, the minimum an average U.S. National Guard or Reserve member drills is 39 days a year, with schools for additional specialty or leadership training typically added to that total.

This national reluctance to seriously develop a nation-in-arms in the face of a totalitarian threat, in contrast to Ukraine’s near-total mobilization, leaves Taiwan vulnerable to Chinese psychological warfare.

China’s Possible Plans

Since Taiwan is an island, China will have a far easier time cutting Taiwan off from the outside world, unlike Ukraine, which was able to communicate its story to the world, as well as receive overland supplies of food, fuel, ammunition, and equipment from friendly nations.

In the early stages of a conflict, China is likely to sever Taiwan’s undersea communication cables, as it did last April to Matsu, one of Taiwan’s small islands less than six miles from the mainland and 106 miles from Taiwan. China will also likely put effort into jamming satellite communications on Taiwan, perhaps even using a nuclear-driven electromagnetic pulse bomb to damage electronic and electrical systems.

Then there’s China’s massive missile force. When then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in April of last year, China conducted live-fire missile drills around Taiwan. It has thousands of additional missiles at the ready to pound Taiwan’s airports, as well as key military installations and civilian infrastructure.

But just as important as the physical damage these missiles are capable of wrecking is the psychological. If China manages to cut off communications and rain missiles down on population centers, even if Japan and the U.S. start to intervene on Taiwan’s behalf, Taiwan’s defenders may not know it. Standing alone against the Chinese communist colossus, some Taiwanese units may lose hope and surrender.

This is why Taiwan needs to stop dallying and immediately stand up a local defense force system. Retired Taiwanese tech billionaire Robert Tsao is leading the way, pledging $33 million to start raising a force of 3 million Taiwanese Minutemen that he calls “Black Bear Warriors.”

Of this, he’s spending $13 million to train 300,000 marksmen on an island not known for its weapon ownership. Such a local force has the advantage of being able to immediately mobilize to defend nearby key points — something that may not be possible with the current system until the reserve force is mobilized well in advance. Which, given Taiwan’s politics and the political and economic consequences of mobilization, is not likely to happen — even with ample warning of an impending Chinese invasion.