Free Republic

The United States ran a $161,025,400,000 merchandise trade deficit with China through the first six months of 2016 (Janaury through June), according to data released by the U.S. Census Bureau today. That deficit with China was by far the largest the U.S. accumulated with any country in the first half of the year. …

Around the announcement of the arbitration tribunal over the South China Sea, Australia was one of the most delirious countries. Canberra immediately supported the arbitration result and claimed China “must” abide by it, and also signed a joint declaration with the US and Japan. Australia has inked a free trade agreement with China, its biggest trading partner, which makes its move of disturbing the South China Sea waters surprising to many. Australia is a unique country with an inglorious history. It was at first an offshore prison of the UK and then became its colony, a source of raw materials,...

China has completed production of the world's largest amphibious aircraft, state media has said, the latest effort in the country's program to wean itself off dependence on foreign aviation firms. The state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled the first of the new planes, dubbed the AG600, Saturday in the southern port city of Zhuhai, the official Xinhua news agency reported. The aircraft, which has a maximum range of 4,500 km (2,800 miles), is intended for fighting forest fires and performing marine rescues, it said. At around the size of a Boeing 737, it is far larger than any...

The first AG600 amphibious aircraft rolls off a production line in Zhuhai, in south China's Guangdong Province. The aircraft will be used to fight forest fires and perform marine rescue missions. (Xinhua photo) GUANGZHOU, Xinhua --- China has completed production of a massive amphibious aircraft that it plans to use to fight forest fires and perform marine rescue missions. The AG600 rolled off a production line in the southern city of Zhuhai on Saturday, in what aviation observers see as a milestone for the country. The aircraft has a maximum take-off weight of 53.5 tonnes, a maximum cruising speed of...

LADAKH: Tipu Sultan, Maharana Pratap and Aurangzeb are surveying the vast open valleys hugging the mountain ranges of eastern Ladakh, ready to counter any threat from China, which lies just across the border. If you are wondering how the three rulers, separated by hundreds of years, have come together, these are the names of three tanks of a regiment the Indian Army has positioned about six to eight months ago in eastern Ladakh. India did briefly use tanks here in the 1962 India-China war (five were air dropped) but they were withdrawn after the humiliating defeat. Now, the tanks of...

The United States will have to comply with New Zealand law when it sends a naval ship here in November, Prime Minister John Key says. ... A surface vessel, which would not be nuclear-powered or carry nuclear weapons, would be the most likely US ship to come, Mr Ayson said. "That doesn't mean that New Zealand has got some sort of victory here over American policy. It just means the two sides are finding another way to work around this." Greenpeace, however, hailed the announcement as a victory for New Zealand, echoing the sentiments of investigative journalist Nicky Hager who...

A British investment company has thrown in the towel on an electric delivery truck manufacturer that it once wholly owned, saw fail, then spun off in the United States at the height of President Obama’s green energy stimulus subsidy mania. U.K.-based Tanfield Group announced at the end of June that it wrote down the value of the last 5.76 percent ownership stake it held in Smith Electric Vehicles, which received $32 million in U.S. taxpayer funds as a formerly British entity that reconstituted and relocated in Kansas City in 2009. The move by Tanfield followed Smith’s legal action filed against...

The troops were traveling to provide security at a refugee camp when their vehicle was hit, the Chinese Defense Ministry statement said. “The Chinese military is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the attack,” the statement said, adding condolences to the victims and their family members. The loss of the two Chinese peacekeepers in South Sudan come after Shen Liangliang, a U.N. peacekeeper stationed in Mali, was killed in an attack on a U.N. camp on May 31 that wounded five other Chinese troops. The three deaths, coming so close together, illustrate the increased risks faced by Chinese peacekeeping troops—particularly...

The troops were traveling to provide security at a refugee camp when their vehicle was hit, the Chinese Defense Ministry statement said. “The Chinese military is deeply shocked by and strongly condemns the attack,” the statement said, adding condolences to the victims and their family members. The loss of the two Chinese peacekeepers in South Sudan come after Shen Liangliang, a U.N. peacekeeper stationed in Mali, was killed in an attack on a U.N. camp on May 31 that wounded five other Chinese troops. The three deaths, coming so close together, illustrate the increased risks faced by Chinese peacekeeping troops—particularly...

What makes the new Chinese capability different is the combination of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capability with long-range precision weapons. “The combination ubiquitous ISR, long-range precision strike weapons take that to the next level,” [Adm. John Richardson, the U.S. Navy’s chief of naval operations], said. “It demands a response.”But the threat is not just contained in the South China Sea, Richardson said. The anti-ship ballistic missile threat is increasingly found around the world and will continue to proliferate. Indeed, the hermit kingdom of North Korea has apparently acquired anti-ship ballistic missile technology. As such, the Navy will have to get...

Striking a notably positive tone, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Saturday offered closer U.S. cooperation with China in pursuit of a deeper and broader Asian security network. He said he intends to visit Beijing this year. In a speech to an international security conference in Singapore, Carter repeated frequent U.S. complaints about China unnerving its neighbors with expansive moves to build up reefs, islets and other land features in the disputed South China Sea. But he did not explicitly accuse China of militarizing those areas. He emphasized possibilities for cooperating with China while stating that the U.S. will remain...

Recently we reported that Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe was under investigation by the FBI and prosecutors from the Justice Department's integrity unit regarding donations to McAuliffe's campaign during his time as a board member of the Clinton Global Initiative. Specifically, investigators were scrutinizing a $120,000 donation McAuliffe received from Wang Wenliang, a Chinese businessman, who was also a donor to the Clinton foundation, pledging $2 million. The Daily Mail has obtained footage that shows the two men entering Hillary Clinton's residence off D.C.'s Embassy row as they attended a fundraiser on September 30, 2013.

The latest hot topic for Chinese rappers is a bearded 19th-century German philosopher who wrote a book called “The Communist Manifesto.” Chinese state media are promoting a new rap song praising Karl Marx, in the latest attempt to leverage popular culture in support of the ruling Communist Party. Entitled “Marx is a post-90” — China’s version of a millennial — the song extols the communist godfather’s supposed coolness with lyrics such as, “Life is full of little accidents, then one day I discovered how awesome he was.” “I saw my faith, don’t even ask why,” it continues. “You are my...

<p>As China continues to posture in the South China Sea, tensions rise between China, Vietnam, Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and other regional powers such as Japan and India.</p> <p>At the defense blog War is Boring, US Naval War College Professor James Holmes discusses recent developments in the South China Sea and the risk of regional conflict.</p>

The United States will remain the world’s leading power for a long time, Foreign Minister Wang Yi said on Friday, but he stressed global affairs should not be dominated by one country. Wang made the remarks during an interview with the Qatar-based broadcaster Al Jazeera, ahead of the seventh ministerial conference of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum in Doha last week, and the transcript of the interview was released on Thursday night. When asked whether China, the world’s second largest economy, had prepared to replace a declining US as global leader, Wang replied “from what we know about the country,...

Two Chinese fighter jets carried out an "unsafe" intercept of a U.S. military aircraft on Tuesday over the South China Sea, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. The incident took place in international airspace as the U.S. reconnaissance aircraft carried out "a routine U.S. patrol," a Pentagon statement said. The incident comes a week after China scrambled fighter jets as a U.S. Navy ship sailed close to a disputed reef in the South China Sea.

At least two Chinese J-11 tactical aircraft carried out an "unsafe" intercept of a United States EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft that was conducting a routine mission in international airspace over the South China Sea, a U.S. defense official told CNN Wednesday. The Chinese jets came within 50 feet of the American aircraft at one point, the official said.

Fifty years after Mao Zedong unleashed the decade-long Cultural Revolution to reassert his authority and revive his radical communist agenda, the spirit of modern China’s founder still exerts a powerful pull. Millions of people were persecuted, publicly humiliated, beaten or killed during the upheaval, as zealous factionalism metastasized countrywide, tearing apart Chinese society at a most basic level. […] It was only in 1981 — five years after Mao’s death — that China’s government officially pronounced the Cultural Revolution “a catastrophe.” But in the ancient city of Luoyang, the old, the poor and the marginalized gather daily in the main...

Britain’s 90-year-old monarch has made a rare foray into political affairs, being caught on film characterizing Chinese officials as “very rude” in their dealings with British counterparts during a state visit last year. Queen Elizabeth II made the unguarded comments Tuesday while talking to a senior police officer at a rain-soaked garden party on the grounds of Buckingham Palace. With uncharacteristic bluntness — rarely if ever heard in public — the queen said the Chinese had not dealt properly with Barbara Woodward, the British envoy to China. “They were very rude to the ambassador,” Elizabeth said. …

The United States ran a merchandise trade deficit of $165.0623 billion in the first quarter of 2016, which was down slightly from the $165.7159 billion merchandise trade deficit the United States ran in the first quarter of 2015, according to data released Wednesday by the Census Bureau. The U.S. exported $347.5618 billion in goods during the quarter and imported $512.6241 billion. The bilateral merchandise trade deficit with China during the first quarter was $77.9461 billion—by far the largest with any nation. […] The second largest bilateral merchandise trade deficit the United States ran during the quarter was the $16.9356 billion...