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The PRC has adopted a sustained coercive campaign against the Philippines to seize its sovereign territory. The world is witnessing this aggression today in the South China Sea. Awarning from the 20th century is that dictatorships tend to use aggression not first against great powers but against smaller states. Hitler pressured Austria and seized the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia before seizing the rest of the Czech Republic, turning Slovakia into a protectorate, and seizing Memel (Klaipeda) from Lithuania. After checking Japan in 1938 and 1939 in the Far East, Stalin aggressed against Poland with his ally Nazi Germany before turning to...

Genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, the Chinese Foreign Ministry, and regime-approved commenters on the tightly controlled Chinese internet praised the late Henry Kissinger on Thursday as an “old friend” and “trail-blazer” in American politics. Kissinger, a former secretary of state and the architect of a form of diplomacy that granted Mao Zedong’s China access to the civilized world despite its rampant human rights atrocities, died on Wednesday at the age of 100. His last major public engagement was a visit to China in July, where he met with Xi personally and received a lavish welcome banquet.

Analysis: As the Trump administration continues to express greater support for Taiwan, China is exerting more effort in peeling away as many of Taiwan’s remaining 17 allies as it can, as a way to further isolate the island. Moving into regions so close, geographically and politically, to Washington is akin to the Soviet Union moving into traditional U.S. zones of influence in the Caribbean (Cuba) and Latin America during the Cold War.

Global airlines are obeying Beijing’s demands to refer to Taiwan explicitly as a part of China, despite the White House’s call this month to stand firm against such “Orwellian nonsense.” The Associated Press found 20 carriers, including Air Canada, British Airways and Lufthansa, that now refer to Taiwan, the self-ruled island that Beijing considers Chinese territory, as a part of China on their global websites. There are just three days left for dozens of foreign airlines to decide whether to comply with Beijing’s orders, or face consequences that could cripple their China business, including legal sanctions. Many have already sided...

The bone in Beijing's throat Posted: December 22, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. During the early Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev referred to West Berlin, the free city of 2 million surrounded by the Red Army and East Germany, as "a bone in our throat." That bone helped kill the Soviet Empire. Now, the bone in Beijing's throat is Taiwan. Though the island was ruled by the mainland for only four years of the 20th century, Beijing claims Taiwan as a lost province. Before 1945, Taiwan was a colony of Japan, which had seized it in the...