Replies to post #346644 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

US diplomat's comments on India-China border issue 'nonsense', says China

"Analysis | What’s behind Trump’s China attacks?"

Responding to a question on the flare-up of border tensions between India and China, Alice G Wells, the senior US diplomat for South and Central Asia, on Wednesday described Beijing's aggression as "not always rhetorical" and accused it of continuing with its "provocative and disturbing behaviour" to try to shift the status quo.

BEIJING: China on Thursday termed as "nonsense" a senior US diplomat's remarks blaming it for using constant aggression on the border with India to try to change the status quo and said consultations were going on through diplomatic channels between the two countries which has "nothing to do" with Washington.

Responding to a question on the flare-up of border tensions between India and China, Alice G Wells, the senior US diplomat for South and Central Asia, on Wednesday described Beijing's aggression as "not always rhetorical" and accused it of continuing with its "provocative and disturbing behaviour" to try to shift the status quo.

"There's a method here to Chinese operations, and it is that constant aggression, the constant attempt to shift the norms, to shift what is the status quo. It has to be resisted," Wells told the Atlantic Council think-tank at an event on Wednesday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Chinese-Foreign-Ministry .. spokesman Zhao Lijian told a media briefing here that China's position on China-India boundary issue had been consistent and clear.

The US "diplomat's remarks are just nonsense," he said when asked about Wells' comments.

"China's border troops .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/border-troops .. firmly safeguard China's territorial sovereignty and security, and firmly deals with the Indian side's crossover and infringement activities," Zhao said.

"Our troops firmly safeguard the peace and stability in the border region. We urge the Indian side to work together with us, abide by our leadership's important consensus, comply with the agreements signed, refrain from unilateral actions complicating the situation," he said.

"We hope they will make concrete efforts for peace and tranquillity in the border region. There are consultations and diplomatic channels between the two sides that has nothing to do with USA," Zhao said.

On May 5, around 250 Indian and Chinese army personnel clashed with iron rods, sticks, and even resorted to stone-pelting in the Pangong Tso .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Pangong-Tso .. lake area in which soldiers on both sides sustained injuries.

In a separate incident, nearly 150 Indian and Chinese military personnel were engaged in a face-off near Naku La Pass in the Sikkim sector on May 9. At least 10 soldiers from both sides sustained injuries in the incident, according to sources.

The troops of India and China were engaged in a 73-day stand-off in Doklam tri-junction .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Doklam-tri-junction .. in 2017 which even triggered fears of a war between the two nuclear-armed neighbours.

The India-China border dispute covers the 3,488-km-long Line of Actual Control, the de-facto border between the two countries. China claims Arunachal Pradesh as part of southern Tibet .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Tibet .. while India contests it.

Both sides have been asserting that pending the final resolution of the boundary issue, it is necessary to maintain peace and tranquillity in the border areas.

China has been critical of India's reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir, and has particularly criticised New Delhi for making Ladakh .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Ladakh .. a union territory. China lays claim over several parts of Ladakh.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping .. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/topic/Xi-Jinping .. held their first informal summit in April 2018 in the Chinese city of Wuhan, months after the Doklam standoff.

In the summit, the two leaders decided to issue "strategic guidance" to their militaries to strengthen communications so that they can build trust and understanding.

Modi and Xi held their second informal summit in Mamallapuram near Chennai in October last year with a focus on further broadening bilateral ties.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/us-diplomats-comments-on-india-china-border-issue-nonsense-says-china/articleshow/75865252.cms

See also:

Inside Kashmir, Cut Off From the World: ‘A Living Hell’ of Anger and Fear
"Why Do India and Pakistan Keep Fighting Over Kashmir?
"PM Modi Visits China For Second Time In 6 Weeks, Meets Xi Jinping Today: 10 Facts"
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=150532854

Why Do India and Pakistan Keep Fighting Over Kashmir?
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=147168979

[fuagf]

Pompeo says U.S. ready to team up on China, but E.U. eyes a post-Trump world

"Analysis | What’s behind Trump’s China attacks?
"Trump and Modi are the mainstream faces of the global far right""

Sorry pal, you and your boss shit on us comprehensively, now you expect us to jump to your tune to help your
bully boss get reelected. It's about time you guys understood that's not how a cooperative relationship works.

Secretary of State is now "excited" to accept Josep Borrell proposal for dialogue on Beijing.


President Donald Trump. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

06/25/2020 03:33 PM EDT

Donald Trump is finally ready to join forces with the EU against China — but his offer to link arms comes just as many European leaders are hoping U.S. voters will soon ditch the president, and after three years in which trust in Washington has all but evaporated.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday unexpectedly declared that the U.S. had accepted a proposal to create a new U.S.-EU dialogue on China that was put forward .. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-foreign-ministers-mike-pompeo-talks-transatlantic-blues/ .. last week by the bloc's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, during a videoconference.

Pompeo, in a speech to the Brussels Forum, an annual event held by the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., laid out a litany of complaints and grievances with Beijing, referring repeatedly to "the threat of the Communist Party in China" and hammering especially hard on allegations that China covered up information about the outbreak of the coronavirus.

He accused China of "provocative military actions" including "continued aggression in the South China Sea, deadly border confrontations in India, an opaque nuclear program and threats against peaceable neighbors."

He charged that China "has broken multiple international commitments including those to the WHO, the WTO, the United Nations and the people of Hong Kong" and he lambasted China's "predatory economic practices, such as trying to force nations to do business with Huawei, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party's surveillance state" and its "legion human rights abuses." (Huawei has repeatedly denied having close links with the Chinese government.)

"I am starting to see even more realism on the Continent as it relates to the threat of the Communist Party in China," Pompeo said at the start of his remarks. "We should address that challenge together, as transatlantic partners have met many challenges."

But European allies have detected little willingness from Trump to act as a transatlantic partner in recent years, as he systematically abandoned an array of international agreements supported by EU and NATO allies. And indeed other parts of Pompeo's speech, including about Trump's surprise decision to withdraw thousands of U.S. troops from Germany, highlighted those differences.

Pompeo's acceptance of Borrell's proposal was all the more remarkable because the American diplomat had virtually ignored it during the videoconference call last week with EU foreign ministers, offering no immediate response and little encouragement. Since then, Borrell himself has played down ..

last week with me, @JosepBorrellF said "I wouldn’t give (it) too much importance…What I wanted to say is that we have to continue talking about our relationship with China, to discuss more, to discuss deeper which are our positions – not once in a while.” -3-

— laurence norman (@laurnorman) June 25, 2020

.. the significance of his own initiative, saying it was just an idea he put forward.

But in the last 10 days, the political landscape has shifted. EU leaders held a high-level virtual "summit" with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, in which they stressed a strong willingness to work with Beijing but also forcefully voiced concerns about disinformation, human rights and the heavy-handed approach to Hong Kong. Meanwhile, Trump held a disastrous, poorly-attended rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma; a book by his former national security adviser, John Bolton, described the president as incompetent and ignorant of basic facts; and Trump has sagged in the polls against former Vice President Joe Biden.

Even before Bolton's book was published, PDF copies were making the rounds among well-connected European politicos, who thought there was little left about Trump that could shock them ..

I have met many leaders over my years in office, but this one certainly takes the ignorance price of the century. Don’t know if I should laugh or cry. A bit of both, I suppose. Sad, really. 🤦‍♂️

— Alexander Stubb (@alexstubb) June 18, 2020

, only to discover that he once asked if Finland was part of Russia.

During Thursday's speech and question-and-answer session, in which Pompeo appeared by videoconference, the secretary of state professed to have enormous enthusiasm for Borrell's proposal, and said he hoped to travel to Europe "in just a handful of weeks to go kick that off."

"I am pleased to announce that the United States has accepted High Representative Borrell's proposal to create a U.S.-EU dialogue on China," Borrell said. "I am excited about a new mechanism for discussing the concerns we have about the threat that China poses to the West and our shared democratic ideals."

When the moderator of the event, Bojan Pancevski of the Wall Street Journal, pressed Pompeo for details, he insisted that the U.S. was already pushing forward.

"You are right. This is new, the proposal came from High Representative Borrell just within the last handful of days," Pompeo said. "But you should know, we were very interested in it. We put a big team on working together to begin to outline the shape of what this would look like." He added, "I don't know exactly what shape it will take. I am confident we will set up a structure that will enhance our collective shared knowledge."

At the start of Trump's presidency, EU leaders harbored hopes that the combative president would team up with them to address an array of issues with China, particularly related to trade disputes, on which Beijing had long refused to give any ground. Instead, Trump lumped the EU, and especially Germany, together with China as trade rivals who had taken advantage of the U.S., and even slapped punitive tariffs on EU steel and aluminum products that prompted swift retaliation from Brussels.

And even as Pompeo said he was excited about the new dialogue over China, he reiterated some areas of sharp disagreement between Washington and European allies, including over Trump's surprise decision to reduce the U.S. military presence in Germany, which Trump has linked .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-president-duda-republic-poland-joint-press-conference-3/ .. to his political disagreements with Berlin, including Germany's slow increases in military spending and its continued support of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

Pompeo in his speech tried to insist that Trump's decision was based on a careful "strategic review" of military deployment levels and needs — a point that has been flatly refuted ..

This is total BS. The Pentagon's cocom review has been basically on hold due to Covid, and even if it weren't it would not have included withdrawing troops from Germany. DOD sources say they were blindsided by the WH announcement. https://t.co/jgKJFLfkhj

— Lara Seligman (@laraseligman) June 25, 2020

.. by current and former U.S. military officials.

Given the deep lack of trust, it seems unlikely that much progress will be made discussing China or anything else between now and the November election in the U.S. EU leaders at the moment are intensely focused on debating their new long-term budget and a European Commission proposal for an ambitious economic recovery fund.

The Brussels Forum is often a showcase for the exchange of ideas among transatlantic allies, but that has hardly been the case during Trump's years in office. In another speech to the German Marshall Fund, in December 2018 in Brussels, Pompeo left his audience of high-powered officials in stunned silence .. https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-brussels-mike-pompeo-critics-plain-wrong/ .. as he unleashed an attack on multilateral institutions and "bureaucrats."

Pompeo opened Thursday's speech by insisting that he was right the first time. "I don't think that was a favorite among the European press," he said of his 2018 speech. "But you should know that privately many of my counterparts told me that they agreed with me."

On China, Pompeo said he believed the devastating COVID-19 pandemic had created more willingness in the U.S. and Europe to confront the Asian giant, picking up a favorite theme of Trump who called the virus "kung flu" at his rally in Oklahoma.

"The United States is not forcing Europe to choose between the free world or China's authoritarian vision — China is making that choice," Pompeo said in his speech, adding: "The CCP's cover-up of the coronavirus, an outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, which has now killed tens of thousands of our people and hundreds of thousands of people across the world, I think that has accelerated everyone's awakening. Europeans, like Americans, are starting to find their voice."

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/25/pompeo-says-us-ready-to-team-up-on-china-but-eu-eyes-a-post-trump-world-340103

See also:

This Is Just Low-Energy Lying From President Lobster King
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156523043

"U.S.A. note" - Taiwan election: Tsai Ing-Wen wins landslide in rebuke to China
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156418259

Trump asked China’s Xi to help him win reelection, according to Bolton book
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=156359945