China is negotiating with Cuba about a joint military training and enhanced intelligence center 100 miles from Florida. The center would no doubt host vast numbers of China’s 2 million-plus active troops as combat readiness grows and U.S. military secrets become a reading pleasure.
But there’s another worry, namely that Cuba will at some point sacrifice its sovereignty as it becomes a part and not just a partner of the People’s Republic of China, this nation of a billion-plus population wanting to rule the world. China desires more than just a squatting place next door to America; while Cuba does seem to have some doubts about the military center, that may be washed away as China pours billions of dollars into its economy.
This is scary in a variety of ways, considering how it could be a means of China going beyond trade tricks to security tricks and control Latin America. Well, all the best to decent free-world leaders who must resolve this conflict and take note of the news to become aware of still more Chinese bellicosity requiring unified responses.
Consider, for instance, sparkling Taiwan and how it wants to retain its independence and how China recently as much as pretended it was in a full-scale war with this comparative smidgen in the sea. The barrage of warships, jets and live-fire pretty much summed up how a real war would end with no cheers from humane voices. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he does not support a Taiwanese declaration of independence and President Joe Biden said the United States would intervene if there were a Chinese attack. Compromise?
The trouble is China just won’t stop. Next, as reported by The New York Times, ponder how China has taken its old-style coast guard with relatively restrained safeguard responsibilities and made it into a collection of destroyers bullying other ships around Asia with collision or whatever device is needed. It’s the biggest coast guard in the world and now part of a naval fleet that has more battle ships than any other country, a foremost advantage in a world war, an expert says.
It’s not just with martial means that China is fulfilling its aspirations for conquest. At one point the United States was investigating 1,000 cases of China stealing our technology. It cheats in trade, spies like crazy, takes economic control over smaller nations around the world, has lately been buying up American farmland, has taken over much of the Middle East and is enjoying a virtual marriage with Russia.
Watching out for China especially means watching out for the ultra-powerful, authoritarian President Xi Jinping who thinks human rights are human wrongs, has happily slaughtered Chinese Muslims, is devoted to Communist Party management, has modernized the military and has kept some capitalist notions in a still closely directed economy now in trouble.
Recently, trying to repair U.S.-China relationships, Blinken met with Xi in China and said the half-hour included some banging of heads, that he did mention issues of human rights, that tensions lessened, that there were some small agreements and that Xi decided to continue such cease-fire conversations.
Biden then butted in from long distance, absurdly saying the Chinese spy balloon that carefully hovered over U.S. military sites last February had been blown off course. Maybe he was trying to appease Xi even though Biden then described him as a “dictator” and said he didn’t know what was going on. The word “dictator” outraged Xi, leading a spokesman to make that known and maybe some Americans to wonder about Biden’s diplomatic acuity. He still must oppose the training center.
Tribune News Service
