China

BY MELVIN GOODMAN Photograph Source: Department of Defense – Public Domain Over the past 60 years, U.S. presidents have benefitted from advice from moderate and pragmatic advisers as well as examples of presidents ignoring such advice and suffering the consequences. President John F. Kennedy was not admirably served by his secretaries of state and defense, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara, but a little-known U.S. Foreign Service Officer, Llewellyn Thompson, former ambassador to the USSR, provided the off-ramp that resolved the Cuban missile crisis without use of force.  An official in the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson, George Ball, provided superb advice that challenged the Cold War thinking of the “best and brightest” leftovers from the Kennedy administration, but Johns...

Washington says Beijing must not use lawmaker visits as pretext for an attack – while trying to provoke exactly that By Timur Fomenko, a political analyst  US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman ©  JIM WATSON / AFP The United States has publicly warned China against using US lawmakers’ visits to Taiwan “as a pretext for military action” and has demanded that other countries warn Beijing against conflict over the island. The statements were made last week by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. They come amid speculation that more American congressional representatives will soon visit Taiwan. US lawmakers have been making such trips since then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit last August, which created a crisis and c...

Beijing is ready to respond to Washington’s attempts to “hype up” the situation, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has said FILE PHOTO: Wang Yi, the Chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission of the Communist Party of China, attends the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Bavaria, Germany, on February 18, 2023. ©  Global Look Press / dpa / Peter Kneffel The shooting down of a Chinese balloon was nothing but an “abuse of force” by Washington, senior Chinese diplomat, Wang Yi, told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Sunday. The US will bear the “consequences” if it tries to stir up tensions even further in the wake of the incident, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement describing the...

Beijing has warned of countermeasures against Washington amid competing claims of espionage A sailor aboard a US Navy vessel prepares to transport material recovered from a Chinese balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month. ©  Ryan Seelbach/U.S. Navy via Getty Images The Chinese Foreign Ministry warned of countermeasures to punish US entities on Wednesday after Washington “overreacted” to an alleged Chinese spy balloon in American airspace by shooting down the unmanned airship and imposing sanctions. “The US has abused force, overreacted, escalated the situation, and used this as a pretext to illegally sanction Chinese companies and institutions,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters ...