A Uyghur separatist group that helped to topple the government of Bashar al Assad has declared its intention to return to Xinjiang in order to conduct military operations against the People’s Republic of China. 

The announcement suggests that Washington and its allies are preparing to open another front in a war that has already plunged large parts of eastern Europe and the Middle East into chaos. The announcement was mostly ignored by the western media, but analysts believe we may have entered a new phase in America’s struggle to preserve its waning hegemony, a phase in which the probability of a direct clash between the United States and China has increased dramatically.

Also, if we assume that Washington’s sabotage of the Nordstream pipeline was designed to prevent the economic integration of Russia with the European Union, then we must assume that the same blueprint will be applied to China. Washington will use its Uyghur proxies to sever the critical arteries that link China to Europe, thus, blocking the rise of a free trade Superstate that would severely undermine US regional influence. This means we should expect a wave of asymmetrical attacks on vital infrastructure aimed at preventing the development of China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. (More on this later) As always, US foreign policy is guided by the despotic credo called the Wolfowitz Doctrine which states the following:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

Central Asia is the hill on which the US empire has chosen to die. Even so, a “cornered” Superpower that is armed to the teeth and led by ravenous warhawks can do considerable damage before it is brought to heel. That said, Washington’s focus on Central Asia is thoroughly understandable given the fact that the area is on-track to become the most populous and prosperous region in the world. Here’s how Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up in The Grand Chessboard in 1997:

“For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… (p.30)….. Eurasia is the globe’s largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. ….About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.” (p.31)

While Brzezinski helps us to grasp Eurasia’s importance vis a vis America’s ambition to maintain its grip on global power, political analyst Li Jingjing provides the details of why the US has chosen to use the Uyghurs as a means to destabilize Central Asia. Check out this riveting video that explains Xinjiang’s geostrategic importance and how it led to the creation of the “Uyghur genocide” hoax:

Li Jingjing—Do you know why the US wants to separate Xinjiang from the rest of China?

Because Xinjiang ‘s location is way too important geopolitically. Through Xinjiang, China can bring something to all of Eurasia that scares US politicians the most: Peace.

Let me explain why.

First, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, located in northwest China, connects China with Central Asia. Xinjiang shares borders with eight countries: Mongolia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. Xinjiang wasn’t just a key hub in the ancient Silk Road, it’s also a key gate for the current Belt and Road Initiative to expand westward. It will connect East Asia, Central Asia, West Asia and Europe. 

This is the region that the US government and several western governments have been spending billions of dollars in the past decades to sponsor terrorism, wars and instabilities. The textbook divide and conquer strategy, because Eurasia is too big, and if they unite, they will be too strong. And that is a threat to the US maintaining its privileged position in the world, in other words, hegemony over the world.

However, China’s Belt and Road Initiative is bringing infrastructure and economic development to this region. China-Europe railways go through here, billions of dollars in trade is taking place at ports in Xinjiang and this economic development will raise the living standards of people across the region. And when people are better off, there will be no reason to participate in wars and terrorism.

So the US came up with a plan, they decided to support separatism and divide Xinjiang from China. In the 1990s, Graham E Fuller who served in the National Intelligence Council and the CIA, wrote a report called “The Xinjiang Problem”. In the report, he was teaching his fellow politicians and scholars, how to play the “Uyghur card” to stoke separatism among Uyghurs to destabilize and contain China. According to retired Lt. Colonel Lawrence B Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff under Secretary of State Colin Powell.

“Here is what we decided for Afghanistan. We were in Afghanistan as we were in post WW2 Germany, for 50 years. It has nothing to do with Kabul and state building, nothing to do with fighting the Taliban, or proving we can reconcile with the Taliban, and nothing to do with fighting any terrorist group. Because it is the only hard power the US has that sits proximate to the Belt and Road Initiative of China that runs across Central Asia. If we had to impact that with military power, we are in a position to do so in Afghanistan. 

And the second reason we’re there is because we are cheek and jowl with the potentially most unstable nuclear stockpile on the face of the earth, in Pakistan. We want to be able to leap on that stockpile and stabilize it if necessary.

And the third reason we’re there is because there are 20 million Uyghurs. And if the CIA has to mount an operation using those Uyghurs, as Erdogan has done in Syria against Assad,there are 20,000 of them in Idlib in Syria right now, (That’s why the Chinese might be deploying military forces to Syria in the very near future to take care of those Uyghurs that Erdogan invited in.) Well, the CIA would want to destabilize China, and that would be the best way to do it to foment unrest and to join with those Uyghurs in pushing the Han Chinese in Beijing from internal places rather than external.”

Unfortunately for the US, their plan to separate China is failing. All 56 ethnic groups in China love and support each other, we united and hold on to each other like pomegranate seeds. And we will unite with the rest of the world to build a community with a shared future for all mankind. How the CIA Plans to Destabilize Central Asia by Playing the Uyghur Card, Li Jingjing @Jingjing_Li

Bottom line: The Uighur genocide is a human rights hoax that has been concocted in order to justify future hostilities against the PCR. In a recent article, editor Ron Unz exposed this sham and said this:

For several years our government and our mainstream media have heavily promoted claims of a Chinese genocide of the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, supposedly drawing upon secretive intelligence sources that I found very dubious. After watching those four hours of personal travelog footage, I consider those incendiary claims as totally preposterous as anything I’ve ever heard.Propaganda-Hoaxes vs. Chinese Reality, Ron Unz, Unz Review

Here’s more from Unz:

Top officials of the…. Trump Administration….(declared) that China was committing “genocide” against its Muslim Uyghur population of Xinjiang province, with the New York Times and our other leading media outlets endorsing and heavily amplifying those explosive accusations….. I regularly ridiculed those accusations, emphasizing that they seemed based upon no solid evidence and greatly reminded me of the false claims of Saddam’s WMDs that that been used to launch our ill-fated Iraq War….. What made these accusations about Xinjiang seem so totally absurd was that the huge province was completely open to both Chinese and foreign tourists, who regularly traveled there in large numbers, attracted by its scenic vistas and interesting Muslim Turkic culture. The notion that China was committing a “genocide” in a region constantly crisscrossed by tourists seemed like the most mindless sort of dishonest propaganda, aimed at the gullible and the dim-witted. Propaganda-Hoaxes vs. Chinese Reality, Unz Review

Unz’s view of the Uighur genocide is further reinforced by the group’s suspicious relationship to the CIA which suggests that the militants have been groomed for carrying out Washington’s geopolitical agenda. Check out this excerpt from an article at Global Research:

The Turkistan Islamic Party (TIC), a terrorist organization, was founded by Uyghur jihadists in 1988, just as separatist uprisings were breaking out in Xinjiang province, north-western China. The Turkistan Islamic Party, previously known as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, received CIA sponsorship from its early existence.

In contradictory fashion, the Turkistan Islamic Party, which is based largely in north-western Pakistan, is deemed a terrorist organization by the United States, along with other major countries like Russia, and of course China and its neighbor Pakistan.

By 2001, militant Uyghurs were preparing for guerrilla warfare in the same camps situated in Afghanistan where the CIA and ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service, had once provided training to Mujahideen extremists – in order to hamper Soviet troops embedded in Afghanistan 40 years ago. Between 1990 and 2001, the Turkistan Islamic Party perpetrated over 200 terrorist acts, including blowing up vehicles, market places and assassinating Chinese government officials….

High profile Uyghur separatists, like the Xinjiang-born Anwar Yusuf Turani, founder of the East Turkestan Government in exile, is himself living in the state of Virginia, on America’s east coast. Turani has been a willing tool in Washington’s power game with China; in June 1999, he met with president Bill Clinton and asked him to back political movements seeking independence for Xinjiang; and Turani later enjoyed dialogue with Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, who promised to support the “fundamental human rights” of “Uyghurs and others living in China”….

Further prominent Uyghur exiles living in America have called for Xinjiang’s independence from China, such as Rebiya Kadeer, a five-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, born in Xinjiang, and who also resides in the US state of Virginia.

For 11 years until November 2017, she was the leader of the World Uyghur Congress (WUC), headquartered in Munich, and which is partly funded by the National Endowment For Democracy (NED). The NED, partially subsidised by the United States Congress, has a long history of “soft power” interference in sovereign states around the world: China, Nicaragua, the Ukraine, and so on.

The World Uyghur Congress was established in April 2004 by Erkin Alptekin, a former adviser to the CIA.
Seventy Years of U.S. Destabilisation in China. U.S. Sponsored Uyghur Insurgency in Xinjiang, Global Research

So, a number of Uyghur separatists are “living in Virginia” (as guests of the CIA?) and we are expected to believe that Washington’s only interest is human rights?

Nonsense. The US is obviously arming, training and funding another vicious terrorist organization it intends to use to inflict a “strategic defeat” on China, the same as it is doing to Russia in Ukraine.

This is from an article at the Asia Times:

The rapid collapse of the Syrian Arab Army in the face of the advance of Turkish-backed Hayat Tahrir al-Sham… has drawn attention to the foreign fighters within their ranks. First and foremost among those foreign fighters are the Uyghurs from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They used to fight China as part of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement but rebranded as the Turkistan Islamic Party some years back.

Regardless of whichever name they go by, the… organization has a history of collaborating with terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda in support of the quest to carve out a Uyghur state from China. That’s why it was designated as a terrorist group by the UN Security Council….

Members of the group just released a video from Syria calling for militant jihad against China. Yang Xiaotong contributed a detailed Asia Times piece on this subject under the title “China has cause to be terrified of rebel-run Syria.” Two of the most important points are that the Turkistan Islamic Party is recruiting members from Central Asia and that it could reestablish itself in Afghanistan to carry out attacks against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The corridor is considered to be the Belt and Road Initiative’s flagship project, and for years it’s been the target of attacks by the Balochistan Liberation Army….

the Turkistan Islamic Party could re-establish itself in Afghanistan … it could attack the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor …. it can’t be ruled out that the Turkistan Islamic Party might opportunistically want to hit China’s soft spot…

Beyond attacking Pakistani-based Belt and Road projects, such opportunistic motivation could also find relevance in Central Asia…. There are Uyghur communities in Kazakhstan and in perennially unstable Kyrgyzstan from which the Turkistan Islamist Party could find recruits – whether to carry out attacks against Belt and Road projects there or in Pakistan….

Another factor for observers to keep in mind is the role of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency. The Washington Post reported that GUR played a role in HTS’s blitz across Syria. …Nevertheless, the contemporary GUR is also a CIA project, as the Washington Post reported in late 2023. 

The possibility thus arises of the CIA using GUR as a plausibly deniable proxy for managing or at least encouraging the Turkistan Islamist Party’s expansion to the geostrategic Central Asian region between Russia and China. Uyghur separatist threat could reach beyond China’s Xinjiang, Asia Times

The almost total lack of any positive coverage of China in
the British media further closes off the scope even for making
arguments that policy should reflect opportunities from dealing
with China. The Overton window on China policy does not
allow for positive coverage of the country at the moment.
Others have commented on this - for example, Daniel Bell
said,
"There is almost universal consensus in the West that
China is led by an evil government that is bad to its own
people and dangerous to people in other countries. It's
extremely difficult to publish views that argue otherwise'
and continued, 'Public opinion makes it almost impossible
to publish comments that offer a balanced picture of
Chinese politics in leading Western media outlets",
In the current political climate, this looks unlikely
to change. As discussed at the start of this paper, the
important lesson is for responsible politicians and
policymakers to realise that the picture of China they are
getting from the media is an inaccurate and incomplete
one. In short, media coverage and the wider public
debate about China in the UK today fail to reflect the
complex reality of China and close off space for in-depth
understanding or balanced debate about this most
significant of countries.

Of course, this is exactly what’s happening. The CIA is directly involved in hybrid war on China that will include the destruction of soft targets that are essential to complete Beijing’s massive infrastructure project. And what other choice does Washington have? Like Israel, Washington cannot preserve its privileged place in the world order by competing on a level playing field with China that has already overtaken the US in nearly every area of commerce, science and technology. The only way the US can maintain its tenuous grip on power is obliterating anything that threatens its global dominance and then convincing the world that it is just fighting for human rights. Here’s more from the Times of Israel:

Uighur militants have killed hundreds, if not thousands, in attacks inside China in a decades-long insurgency that initially targeted police and other symbols of Chinese authority but in recent years also included civilians. Extremists with knives killed 33 people at a train station in 2014. Abroad, they bombed the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September last year; in 2014, they killed 25 people in an attack on a Thai shrine popular with Chinese tourists…..

China is just like the West, its officials say: the country is a victim of terror, and Uighur men are pulled by global jihadi ideology rather than driven by grievances at home.…. Seyit Tumturk, a Uighur activist in Turkey who often speaks to fighters in Syria… said it was impossible for Uighurs militants to liberate Xinjiang…. But he said Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitious project to develop railway lines, ports, and other infrastructure linking various regions to China makes Beijing vulnerable to militant attacks abroad.

The Islamic State took credit in June for kidnapping and killing two Chinese teachers in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, which is a cornerstone of Beijing’s so-called Belt and Road infrastructure project….

Chinese officials and Western analysts alike say that the Uighurs’ experience in the Syrian jihadi melting pot will likely exacerbate violence against “soft” targets outside China. China’s foreign ministry called the Turkistan Islamic Party a security threat for the Middle East. Uighur militants in Syria look to Zionism as model for their homeland, Times of Israel

So—according to the Times of Israel—the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is a ruthless group of bloodthirsty mercenaries who are motivated more by “global jihadi ideology rather than driven by grievances at home”. This is the organization the US has decided to back in its quest to destabilize China. And, notice that the authors of the Times article have drawn the same conclusion as the author of the Asia Times piece, that the Uyghurs MO will be to attack soft targets that will impact critical infrastructure in order to isolate China from the West while US military bases and Pacific alliances tighten the noose on China’s maritime trade. 

And what targets will these Asian jihadis choose?

Some analysts like Andrew Korybko think that they will “carry out attacks against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor….. (which) is considered to be the Belt and Road Initiative’s flagship project, Asia Times

But IMHO, I think Washington will attack critical nodes on the China-Europe Freight Train (CEFT) system. Keep in mind, the United States remains fully-committed to preventing the re-emergence of a rival in a region it considers vital to its national security (Central Asia) so, logically, we should expect that it will take extraordinary steps to separate China from Europe and, thus, lay the groundwork for economic strangulation. Here’s more from the The European Financial Review:

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will officially be ten years old in 2023…. A crucial precursor to the BRI, and arguably its most prominent flagship project, the China-Europe Freight Train (CEFT) has already run through its first decade of 2011-21. With 82 routes currently connecting nearly 100 Chinese cities to around 200 cities across 24 European countries and more than a dozen Central, East, and Southeast Asian countries, the CEFT has formed a vast transcontinental freight system spanning both ends of Eurasia. While only 17 freight trains ran from China to Europe in the CEFT’s inaugural year of 2011, 60,000 trains cumulatively will have traversed the Eurasian landmass and its maritime margins by October 16, 2022 when the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens in Beijing.

As the CEFT enters its second decade poised for continued growth, a critical question looms: Is Russia’s war against Ukraine disrupting the CEFT, and how? On the one hand, the CEFT has depended heavily on Russia as both the most important terminus and through-corridor accounting for 37 percent of all CEFTs through 2021, leading Germany at 24.3 percent and Poland at 23.4 percent. On the other hand, the CEFT is anchored to a vast network of major and minor cities with grounded flexibility and resilience to weather the Ukraine storm.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 threw a big geopolitical wrench into the CEFT-enabled Eurasian freight network….. The disruption appears major as the war is the biggest European conflict in eight decades, with severe geopolitical consequences…… Some disruption might arise…. as European companies avoid using the Russian Railway, fearing economic sanctions….

As the war in Ukraine keeps geopolitical tensions high, the extensive city-based CEFT network has acquired sufficient resilience from its continued expansion, improved infrastructure, and operational adaptability. These qualities may ensure the CEFT’s sustainability as a Eurasia-wide freight system. Eurasia’s Freight Infrastructure vs. Russia’s War in Ukraine, Chicago Council on Global Affairs

While economic sanctions on Russia have reduced freight traffic along the northern route by roughly 50 percent, the makeshift blockade in the Red Sea by the Houthis has dramatically impacted shipping through the Suez Canal. These growing threats to global security have shifted traffic to the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR)—which is a trade route from the Black Sea and the Caucasus to the Central Asian steppe. This so called Middle Corridor which ” follows the route of the ancient Silk Road” offers a viable alternative to the northern route but also faces its own security and infrastructure challenges. 

Regrettably, we think US foreign policy strategists will focus on this Middle Corridor as a prime chokepoint for disrupting China’s freight service to Europe. Once again, the US cannot prevail in its war against China unless it is able to weaken the country via sanctions, isolation and persistent proxy warfare. Washington is positioning itself to either block or sabotage China’s trade-flows to Europe just like it sabotaged the flow of Russian gas to Europe. We believe that Uyghur jihadists will be used to help conduct these operations.

We also think that Washington will use any overreaction by Beijing as an excuse to deploy the U.S. Navy to block energy shipments to China, thereby preventing the country from accessing the resources it needs to heat its homes and fuel its industries. China imports over 70 percent of its oil which makes it vulnerable to hostile interdiction.

The US used this same strategy against Japan just months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, so it fully understands the implications of its actions.

Bottom line: Western elites have already decided that they will do ‘whatever it takes’ to preserve America’s global primacy. And, if that means nuclear war, then so be it.

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/washington-deploys-proxies-to-xinjiang-to-scuttle-chinas-giant-infrastructure-project/

---------------------------------------

MEANWHILE:

In a "report" published on December 5, the Washington-based "International Campaign for Tibet" (ICT) denounces for the umpteenth time an alleged "threat to Tibet's culture, community and environment". This time, the "threat" comes from Chinese hydroelectric dams.

The leader raises his baton in Washington, and instantly the well-rehearsed chorus of our major Atlanticist media begins to sing the refrain of "persistent and flagrant violations of the human rights of the Tibetan people". (1) This is what readers of the Belgian dailies Le Soir (2) and La Libre Belgique were able to see again on December 5, when their newspapers served them the allegations taken from a "report" published that same day in Washington by the anti-Chinese NGO ICT.

The Brussels media are in the front row when it comes to this kind of action, since the Belgian capital has the double “honour” of being both the headquarters of NATO and of hosting, like Amsterdam, the European branch of the ICT.

This could explain the fact that Radio France reacted with a little delay. Its article, signed Nathanaël Charbonnier, which denounces “a human catastrophe that awaits us” because of the “dizzying project of building dams by China” is dated 6 December. (3) Its specificity is to give the floor to Senator Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio (Les Républicains), both a “member of the France Tibet group” (4) and the France-Israel group (5), as well as to the Belgian Vincent Metten, member of the ICT, “European director of the International Federation for Human Rights for Tibet” (6) and “former advisor to the Belgian Ministry of Defense and Military Affairs to the European Commission”. (7) True defenders of human rights and oppressed peoples, without a doubt!

The publication, on the same day or almost, of these articles in the French-speaking Atlanticist press shows that we are dealing with a propaganda campaign led by the anti-Chinese NGO based in Washington and which bears its name of “International Campaign” aptly.

The obvious bias of the “reference” Belgian French-language newspapers

In the article in Le Soir, the first statement already proves the bias of its author Véronique Kiesel. Because according to her, the ICT whose figurehead is the Hollywood actor Richard Gere "defends the rights of the populations of Tibet against the Chinese power". Who can still believe in all sincerity that the NGOs based in Washington are anything other than the preferred tools of the US soft power used to discredit Washington's geopolitical opponents? The discourse of "human rights" and "populations to defend" held from the capital of the Empire is less credible than ever since the world witnesses day by day the genocide underway in Gaza, perpetrated with total impunity with the approval and active complicity of the collective West.

The map in Le Soir supposed to show the dams, dam projects and "proposed" (?) dams in "Tibet" is just as misleading. Indeed, a very large (most?) part of these are not in Tibet itself, that is to say in the Tibet Autonomous Region, but in the neighboring provinces of Qinghai and Sichuan. The use of a false map showing a “Tibet that covers (sic!) no less than a quarter of the Middle Kingdom” (8) speaks volumes about the bias of Le Soir and its journalist. Because what this map shows is the “Greater Tibet” as claimed by the Dalai Lama and the chauvinistic circles of Tibetan exile financed and pampered by the CIA. This is an outrageous claim that disregards history and common sense, since the regions of Qinghai and Sichuan that the authors of the map had the nerve to attach to “Tibet” were never administered by Lhasa and its Dalai Lamas. According to Véronique Kiesel, who repeats all of Washington’s theses without the slightest critical sense, hydroelectric dams built in Tibet and in the surrounding regions “present the greatest risk to Tibetan civilization, environmental sustainability and the climate”.

So let’s examine these three “risks” one by one.

Dams incompatible with “Tibetan civilization”?

How can the construction of hydroelectric dams harm “Tibetan civilization”? Here is the (only) answer given in the Soir article: dams “regularly lead to the expulsion of Tibetans from their traditional homes and lands”. And Ms. Kiesel cites (as proof?) the allegation (word for word identical) of the ICT saying that “dams regularly lead to the expulsion of Tibetans from their traditional homes and lands, often permanently depriving them of their means of subsistence based on land and water."

“The expulsion of Tibetans”? Shouldn’t we have written “of (some) Tibetans”, that is to say those whose homes will end up below the water level when it is held back by a new dam? And why speak a priori of “expulsion” rather than “rehousing”? Is any displacement or rehousing necessarily an expulsion, a forced relocation? The fact that these authors do not doubt that in China, the evil authorities necessarily resort to constraint and the manu militari expulsion of the people concerned testifies to their strong cognitive bias.

The English Wikipedia lists 17 large hydroelectric dams currently under construction in 12 countries as well as 200 existing hydroelectric dams worldwide that have an electricity production capacity of at least 1,000 MW.

Apart from China, this latest list includes the following states that operate one or more of these dams: the United States, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, Spain with Portugal, Norway, Romania with Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, Turkey, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Sudan, DR Congo, Mozambique, Ghana, Angola, Zambia with Zimbabwe. (10)

Was a single one of these dams built without having to displace the inhabitants of the areas that were going to be submerged? Of course not. Has the relocation (admittedly regrettable, but inevitable) of part of the surrounding population damaged its “civilization”?

Such an allegation seems insane. Except apparently in the case of “Tibet” and for the site freetibet.org which points out, in an article published a few months ago, that the Gangtuo dam project (Kamtok in Tibetan) in the upper Yangtze risks being built “in the sacred mountains of Gèndong” and that it “threatens to displace” not only “villages” (like all dam projects in the world), but (horror!) also “ancient Buddhist monasteries”. (11)

For the “Free Tibet” propagandists, the population of these remote and underdeveloped regions does not cruelly lack electricity, industrial jobs or modern comfort. They have no need for development and new economic opportunities. What matters most to him is that the “ancient Buddhist monasteries” remain in their place.

But Tibetans in the region “often” risk permanently losing “their livelihoods based on land and water,” claim the self-proclaimed defenders of the “Tibetan cause.” Livelihoods based on water? Tibetans are not known for being great fishermen, for practicing fish farming or for irrigating agricultural land. And unlike land, some of which may actually be submerged, water is not lost when it is held back (partially and temporarily) by a dam.

On the other hand, pastures may indeed be submerged. What then happens to the semi-nomadic pastoralists who have used the submerged lands as a means of subsistence? I admit that they will probably have to adapt, at least in some cases, to the new conditions and choose new economic activities. This will not be easy. But let us remember that China has lifted some 800 million people, most of them living in remote regions like the ones we are talking about, out of absolute poverty. What reason, other than a visceral hatred of socialist China, could lead us to believe that the people displaced and harmed by the construction of these dams will not be compensated, helped and assisted by the authorities?

In any case, what they will experience will not be worse than what tens or even hundreds of millions of people who traditionally worked in the primary sector have experienced in more developed regions of the planet. Thus, the “number of farms in metropolitan France” has fallen “from 1,587,600 in 1970 to 390,000 in 2020, a decrease of approximately 75%. » (12) «In Germany, around 1900, about one in three employees still worked in agriculture» (13), and in «1950, the former Federal Republic of Germany had 2 million farms, while in 2017, there were only 270,000 left.» (14) I could be wrong, but I do not recall having heard of any international propaganda campaigns conducted from Washington accusing France or Germany of endangering their traditional rural civilization.

A risk to “environmental sustainability”?

Even in China, dam projects in the Himalayan regions are not unanimous: the region is geologically unstable, and earthquakes are not uncommon. However, Chinese engineers have already achieved incredible technical feats on the Himalayan plateau, for example by building thousands of kilometers of modern railway lines and highways passing through huge tunnels and bridges. There is therefore some reason to believe that both Chinese planners and engineers will be able to assess the risks and face the challenges related to these projects.

According to the NGO “Free Tibet”, the construction of the Gangtuo dam is supposed to be “implemented by the Chinese state-owned enterprise Huadian, one of the largest emitters of carbon from coal-fired power plants in the world, which has signed a strategic partnership agreement with the German company Siemens”. Since it is generally accepted that hydroelectric dams "are a priori much less polluting than coal-fired power plants" (15), we can conclude that the obvious goal of the Chinese government is to significantly reduce the use of coal in the production of electrical energy, which is undoubtedly a good thing for the environment. However, the anti-Chinese NGO finds an "ecological" argument to denigrate Chinese hydroelectric projects, by emphasizing that "dams" are "not a carbon-neutral energy source. They can indeed emit large quantities of methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas." (16)

Fake ecological arguments

So dams would be major atmospheric pollutants? Let's see what the scientific sources say about it.

Let's first recall that the "main sectors emitting methane are:

- Agriculture (40%), including livestock breeding, animal manure and rice production.

– Fossil fuels (35%), including leaks from natural gas and oil production and distribution systems and coal mines.

– Waste (20%), from food and other organic matter left in landfills, open dumps, and sewage. (17)

It should be noted that even human digestion is a source of methane, with “between 30 and 62% of healthy people” producing it. (18)

As for dams, “methane emissions from reservoirs (hydroelectric and other)” accounted for only “5.2% of anthropogenic methane emissions in 2020.” Globally, “reservoirs are currently small sources of CO2 compared to other sectors.” (19)

While it is true that the “organic matter contained in the flooded soil” of dams “decomposes rapidly after flooding, releasing large quantities of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the first few years following the construction of a hydroelectric plant,” it should be noted that “these emissions then decrease and slowly stabilize as the reservoir ages.” (20)

Furthermore, the geographical conditions (geological and climatic) in the eastern reaches of the Himalayas are rather favorable for the installation of dams. Several aspects come into play: “In cold regions, reservoirs tend to emit less GHGs [greenhouse gases] than in tropical regions, because low temperatures lead to lower bacterial activity and therefore less gas production.” (21) Second, the deep and narrow gorges and the high flow speed of the rivers in the region allow the construction of dams with relatively low retaining walls and relatively small submerged surfaces. Finally, the plant mass likely to decompose and emit greenhouse gases is much less in these rocky high mountain regions than in tropical regions, for example.

Of course, any form of energy production, any industrial or economic activity affects the natural environment. The advantages and disadvantages must still be weighed.

The ICT demands that “the traditional lifestyles of Tibetans” be “preserved”. I am not sure that Tibetans would prefer to return to living as their ancestors did and that they would willingly exchange electric energy and the modern comforts that it brings them for the traditional dried yak dung and butter lamps that were once their main sources of energy or light.

Photovoltaic and wind energy versus hydroelectric energy?

The ICT and its media minions demand that China give up hydroelectric energy and “radically change course in order to take advantage of renewable energies such as solar and wind”. By shedding crocodile tears, they are opposing one form of renewable energy to the others. As if we were not already accustomed to the denigration, by our media, of Chinese photovoltaic panels “produced by forced labor in Xinjiang”, Chinese wind turbines and electric cars...

Solar and wind power? Seriously?

Are we unaware in these circles that China is already the “world champion of the energy transition” and that it “now appears to be the champion in all categories. Electric cars, wind energy, solar panels: production, installation and innovations are following at a frantic pace”? (22) Thus, in 2019, “China installed about a quarter of the global solar capacity that was added that year. By 2023, 62% of the global installed solar capacity was installed by China – that is more than all other countries combined. Between 2019 and 2023, China increased its installed capacity eightfold, while the rest of the world did not even double it. » (23)

The “wind energy situation” is the same, since “all the G7 countries – the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Great Britain – have installed in 2023 barely a quarter of the new installations that China has inaugurated at the same time”.

China is also the world champion in terms of production. In 2023, 90% of “solar cells and wafers” and “60% of wind turbines” were produced in China. (24)

“In 2024, Beijing will add 340 gigawatts of electrical capacity thanks to wind and sun. For comparison, this is as much as all the capacities of the whole of Europe built to date for solar energy”, we could read in Le Figaro. And again: "China's overall renewable energy production capacity is expected to increase by "more than 2 terawatts, or 2,000 gigawatts (GW), between 2023 and 2028, showing growth three times higher than that of the last five years. And solar energy will account for three-quarters" of this energy leap, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted in 2023. This is four times more than Europe over the same period and six times more than the United States." (25)

The attempt by the ICT and its journalistic lackeys to oppose one form of Chinese renewable energy to the others thus ends in ridicule. Asking China to develop solar and wind power is carrying water to the river.

https://www.legrandsoir.info/des-medias-belges-et-francais-participent-a-la-nouvelle-campagne-de-propagande-de-l-ict.html

TRANSLATION BY JULES LETAMBOUR

----------------------------

MEANWHILE: AUSTRALIA IS PREPARING FOR WAR AGAINST CHINA......

"ASPI HATES CHINA"

ASPI, [The Australian Strategic Policy Institute] Peter Jennings and your [The Australian] editorial writer have all breathlessly declared my review of think tanks has killed independent thinking and muzzled free thought. Since think tanks are meant to deal with facts, let’s start there.

This is what I said about think tanks: “At their best they generate policy contestability. Being unencumbered by the government’s bureaucracy and direction allows think tanks to think innovatively, challenge existing ideas, produce new policy concepts and identify emerging issues. The sector injects alternative perspectives into policy discussions, helping to mitigate groupthink.” Hardly the burial rites of independent thinking.

ASPI regards having a departmental representative sit as an observer on the governing council of a government-funded think tank as inviting in the political commissars. Yet this is already standard practice for all government-funded think tanks except ASPI. Has having an observer compromised the independence of the US Studies Centre, the Perth US Asia Centre or the National Security College?

The irony here is that one of my recommendations seeks to dilute the control of the ASPI Council by the defence minister, by allowing the Council, not the minister, to appoint up to three members. Since its inception in 2001, ASPI has been a Commonwealth-owned company governed by a Council appointed exclusively by the defence minister and managed to remain independent. Yet we are asked to believe that having its chief funder as an observer at Council meetings, which typically play no role in deciding the content of ASPI reports, is a full-frontal assault on its independence.

My recommendation to cease funding ASPI’s Washington office was based on a very simple principle. ASPI should not have been given the task of seeking to influence US policy. Influencing the policy of a foreign government in our national interest requires a single voice backed by the authority of the Australian Government. Having ASPI freelance in this area only muddies the water. If ASPI wants to have a presence in Washington, fine, but it should not be government-funded or give the appearance that it speaks for the government. ASPI could look for corporate or philanthropic funding which my review makes easier by recommending it be given tax deductible status.

As for the suggestion that my recommendations were influenced by China’s dislike of ASPI, my report makes it clear that this had no bearing on my conclusions. Indeed, I explicitly state that the idea that a think tank should be shut down because the government does not like its views is a dangerous one and contrary to the value of policy contestability in a liberal democracy.

ASPI objects to the idea of the government setting annual priorities for the funding of strategic policy work. But how else are you supposed to make decisions about what to fund, if not on the basis of clear priorities? And setting priorities is not telling think tanks what their reports should say. That would simply be a waste of money.

ASPI objects to the idea that it would have to compete for funding every five years in an open tender process. I think taxpayers might think the idea that ASPI is entitled to indefinite funding irrespective of performance a bit presumptuous.

As for Peter Jennings’ rather tortuous analogy of how I would feel if my university were to be subject to the requirements I have recommended for think tanks, he obviously has little idea of the raft of government-imposed compliance and regulatory obligations universities face. I would trade that in for the light touch of think tank reporting in an instant.

I do not expect accolades for my review, but I had hoped for a sense of perspective. The sky has not fallen, ASPI will continue to do what it does, independent thinking will remain in the control of the thinker and how well ASPI fares in the competition for funds will depend entirely on how well it does its job. It has done big things before; I am sure it will do so again.

This article first appeared in The Australian

https://johnmenadue.com/think-tank-review-the-sky-is-not-falling/

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

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         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…