關於 military operation other than war ，我們在網路上蒐集到這些相關的討論、資訊與評價

Take it out on Hong Kong! ｜Lee Yee

The rash chap was wronged out there, and went home to beat up his wife and son. Ah Q muttered an insult to the fake foreigner, who beat him up with a mourning stick. Ah Q dared not argue, turned around and provoked Whiskers Wang, whom he despises, and the weak and lowly Young D. Except Whiskers Wang and Young D beat Ah Q, what a slap in the face! Therefore he pinched the young nun in the cheeks to vent.

The US has launched a series of blows against China in the ultra-cold war, with the latest development being the announcement that US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will visit Taiwan. Although there are precedents for the US cabinet members to visit Taiwan, it is now during a pandemic, with the particular highlights of this sensitive period being: that Taiwan has been rejected by the World Health Organization (WHO), that the WHO has joined forces with China, and that the US has withdrawn from the WHO and is preparing to form a new health alliance. In addition, it is rumored that Sun Lijun, the deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Security, who was investigated in April this year, was dismissed for leaking information about the Wuhan epidemic from laboratories. The relevant information has fallen into the hands of Australia and the US, which may trigger a global accountability operation.

As the US and Taiwan get closer, they repeated inch towards the bottom line of China’s tolerance. The next step could be the stationing of US troops in Taiwan, which could even lead to the establishment of diplomatic relations with Taiwan that might not be that surprising.

On the other hand, the US gave up unilateral diplomacy, and Pompeo called on the free world to unite to resist China, a declaration that was welcomed by many countries thanks to the Hong Kong national security law. Britain proposed to form the D-10, a group that is consisted of the Five Eyes, plus Japan, India, South Korea, France, and Germany, with the possibility of ASEAN countries to follow. The latest development is that in Switzerland, which has always maintained a neutral attitude in international affairs and has never been involved in international wars since 1815, Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the media on Aug 2 that Hong Kong’s national security law endangers Hong Kong Swiss enterprises, and if the CCP insists on pursuing it, Western countries will respond more resolutely.

As everyone knows, Swiss banks are famous for their measures against leaking depositors’ information, and therefore money from laundering is often stored in Swiss banks. Last year, Jia Kang, an economist and former director of the Finance Department of the Chinese Ministry of Finance, forwarded the news published by Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) that about 100 Chinese people had deposits of 7.8 trillion yuan, which equals to 1 trillion USD in UBS. The average deposit per person is more than 10 billion USD.

The Swiss Foreign Minister said that Hong Kong’s national security law “endangers Swiss enterprises in Hong Kong”, alluding to the next steps which could well be divestitures. Minus Hong Kong, corrupt Chinese officials have one fewer, and the most convenient, place to hide their money.

Faced with the increasing pressure from the US and Western countries, China’s response has been relatively mild. Except for the babbling from the Ministry of Foreign Arguments, none from the top tier spoke out, and the media reiterated that they would remain “open to the outside world”.

A month ago, Global Times editor-in-chief Hu Xijin posted that China needed to increase the number of nuclear warheads to more than a thousand; a week ago, Old Hu once again proclaimed, “Hurry up and build more nuclear missiles to deter the American lunatics, turn on the steam”. These Weibo posts have hundreds of thousands of likes. However, on Jul 31, Yang Chengjun, high-level military, and nuclear arms control expert, issued a document that slammed, without naming names, Hu’s remarks as “having the foremost purpose of inciting dissatisfaction with the Central government, the Military Commission, and the military”, that it was heinous and “a lie that is extremely detrimental to national security”.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in an interview with Xinhua News Agency that, “We can restart dialogues with all levels and fields with the US any moment. Any issue can be brought to the table for discussion”, “refuse to decouple, maintain cooperation; resist zero-sum, share responsibility”.

Not daring to play hardball with the US? Take it out on Hong Kong. Therefore, the policy towards Hong Kong is only going to become increasingly outrageous. Hongkongers must prepare for the worst.

Lu Xun said, “An angry hero brandishes his sword to challenge the mighty; an angry coward turns his sword to bully the vulnerable”. The next two lines that follow are, “In a hopeless nation, there will be many heroes glaring only at the children. Those wussies!” Wussy [pinyin: can tou]," means a bully who preys on the weak in the Chinese northern dialect.

If the wussies think that little Hong Kong is good to bully, then what has last year’s anti-ELAB movement do to the political, economic, internal, and external environment in the CCP? Winston Churchill said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

‘Ways of the World’: Don’t judge by words but by actions (Lee Yee)

The tables are turned as the Sino-US relations have reverted to half a century ago. No, it is even worse.

In 1969, the evil flames of the Cultural Revolution were still burning and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) led the blind crowd to shout every day, “Down with American Imperialism, Down with Soviet Union Revisionism.” During that year, there was the Sino-Soviet border conflict between the Soviet Union and China in the vicinity of Zhenbao (Damansky) Island. The border clashes were so serious that the Soviet Union was ready to employ nuclear weapons on China’s nuclear military base. At that time, the Soviet ambassador to the US informed the US National Security Advisor Heinz Alfred Kissinger of this intention, hoping that the US would remain neutral. However, President Nixon categorically rejected as he believed once Pandora's box of nuclear weapons was opened, the entire world would kneel before the polar bear. He opposed the Soviet’s operation and leaked the news to a newspaper for publication. China immediately called “the entire nation to enter a ‘Ready to fight’ mode.” The actions of the Soviet Union were contained and the nuclear disaster did not occur.

The following year, in 1970, Mao Zedong invited American pro-CCP journalist Edgar Snow who made a trip to China for an informal talk. Snow might have been entrusted by Nixon to investigate the possibility of breaking the ice in Sino-US relations. In July 1971, Dr. Kissinger made a secret visit to Beijing and facilitated Nixon’s ice-breaking journey to China the year after, and thus began the China and US strategic interactions.

After the Cultural Revolution, China and the US established diplomatic relations in 1979. In that same year, Deng Xiaoping visited the US. On the plane, he said to his associate, “As we look back in the past few decades, all those countries that were in good relations with the US have prospered.”

China has indeed become rich. The American policymakers and businesses all expected that economic freedom would lead China towards political freedom, but no such thing happened. On the contrary, China’s authoritarian politics became harsher and harsher and finally fulfilled Nixon’s frightful prophecy: fearing that he had created a “Frankenstein” by opening the world to the CCP.

If dictatorship does not carry out political reforms in response to economic needs, then all dictators will eventually become a giant monster. What is more terrifying than any other dictators in history is that the US and the Western world have fattened China. Rich and powerful in military strength, its money and influences have penetrated across the globe, giving rise to a situation of what US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described in his speech last week, “If we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms and subvert the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build...If the free world doesn’t change – doesn’t change, communist China will surely change us.”

Pompeo’s speech not only declared the start of the cold war between the US and China, but also signified that a tougher, close-to-war era is looming.

He quoted President Reagan’s saying, that he dealt with the Soviet Union on the basis of “trust but verify.” When it comes to the CCP, said Pompeo, they must “distrust and verify.” “Trust but verify” means they would trust what one says but also observe how one acts; “distrust and verify” on the other hand, means they do not listen to what the person says, but only watch what the person does. Facing deterioration of the relationship with the US, the CCP keeps saying both parties should resume dialogue. But the US is fed up with dialogues. As Pompeo said, all the dialogues with Yang Jiechi are nonsense.

Comparing with speeches made by Chinese politicians, which are often lacking substance but full of self-praise, what touched me most about Pompeo’s speech was how he acknowledged and reflected on previous policy mistakes. He said, “Perhaps we were naive about China’s virulent strain of communism, or triumphalist after our victory in the Cold War, or cravenly capitalist, or hoodwinked by Beijing’s talk of a ‘peaceful rise.’”

Actually, being naive, triumphalist, hoodwinked, were all one, or all of the mistakes committed by numerous countries, investors, people in the past 50 years. Now Pompeo, openly reflecting on these, suggested that the US has completely awakened. Yesterday, Xinhua News Agency was still mumbling about “China-US cooperation would be a win-win situation; fighting against each other would only lead to a lose-lose one.” From the US point of view, the win-win of working together only means China would win twice; when fighting against each other, it would be lose-lose, losing twice for China.

Over a hundred years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian famous for his studies on the new world’s politics and culture, said, “America is great not because she is cleverer than the other countries, but she is more capable of repairing mistakes she made.” This is down to the fact that the US has sufficient freedom of speech, which China lacks. And it is exactly because China prohibits people from “unwarranted public distortion” of the central government, that it keeps making mistakes, again and again.

Military Operation Other Than War (MOOTW) 👏🏻