China Archives - The Naton State

The New Cold War – Part 2

2 August 20202 August 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

With the UK government’s cancellation of Huawei’s 5G infrastructure projects and a recent commitment to asylum seekers from Hong Kong, it’s tempting to conclude that our relations with China are quickly deteriorating. However, just as I pointed out in a previous post, the relationship between China and the West has been remarkably stable for a number of years now.

The sad truth is that, just like a battered spouse, the West is finally beginning to realise just how lopsided and abusive our alleged partnership has been, and for how long.

To put it bluntly, the Chinese Communist Party has been helping the West to fund its own decline for many years, and that decline is carefully designed to ensure that our political, media and business leaders profit greatly from it. Because scrutiny of supply lines does not serve the interests of Western elites, our toxic culture of conspicuous consumerism built on bonded sweatshop labour goes largely unreported. Apple and Nike are two of the worst offenders when it comes to the exquisite hypocrisy of corporate virtue signalling powered by political prisoners who have suicide nets installed in their factories. Do you have suicide nets in your workplace?

I guess Chinese lives don’t matter.

Politics

The New Cold War – Part 1

7 June 20207 June 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

Whether we’re prepared to admit it or not, there’s no escaping the fact that a new Cold War has been raging since at least 2001, although only one of the parties involved seems to have cared or even noticed…until now.

Western democracies have been burdened with a stupefying level of naivete for at least the last century, and its consequences have been far more destructive than anything the coronavirus could ever wreak upon our open and tolerant societies. One of the more insidious side effects of this liberal-democratic mindset is an unfortunate tendency to judge the motivations of others by our own standards. This very often leads Western policy makers to view others as sharing our motives if not our viewpoint, rather than identifying a rival and incompatible belief system for what it really is and effectively challenging it. This peculiar mental pathology remains as much a threat today as it did when Kim Philby was officially cleared of spying for the Soviet Union.

“To fight and conquer in all our battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.” Sun Tzu’s Art of War

Perhaps the most egregious example of this huge blind spot has been the sense of invincibility that settled over the West when the Berlin Wall finally fell in 1989. We thought it was over and we thought we’d won, but that complacency has cost us dear.

Of course, we in the liberal democratic West were not the only ones taking notes as the Soviet experiment collapsed; communist China was also watching carefully, determined not to follow that same road to ruin.

Politics

EU Solidarity was a Fair Weather Fantasy

4 April 202028 April 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

“Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick, a shadow on the wall.” Varys of Lys

So now we know. Now we know for certain that when the chips are down, Brussels has neither the authority nor the inclination to act when it really matters. Right across the continent, borders are going up and countries are looking to their own institutions for answers and action to combat the Coronavirus threat.

The current crisis has finally exposed the myth of European solidarity for the dangerous fair-weather fantasy it always has been. As Italy and Spain struggle to cope with the spiralling crisis, their calls for medical and financial aid from Brussels have effectively come to naught. Despite decades of tall talk about being stronger together, this crisis has revealed that the EU’s obsession with ever closer union was only ever driven by a pathological lust for raw political power. When the chance finally arrives to put these lofty ideals into action, both Brussels and EU member states are nowhere to be found. Platitudes about solidarity lie trampled in the dust as countries pull up the drawbridge and leave the stragglers to fend for themselves in a display of self-interest that will not soon be forgotten by Italy, Spain and many others across the continent.

In fairness, it’s only natural for nations to look to their own security in a situation like this, and it would be foolish to criticise them for acting in the best interests of their citizens. Still, it’s very telling that in times of real crisis, the most enduring and efficient power structure remains the much maligned nation state, not the EU, the UN, the WHO or any of globalism’s impotent alphabet institutions.

Politics

North Korea’s A-Team H-Bomb

4 September 20179 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

Where the hell did that come from?

North Korea’s alleged H-bomb test seems to have taken the world completely by surprise. Indeed, when it comes to constructing impossible devices with no resources, Big Kim and his boys would surely give the A-Team a run for their money.

There are two possibilities here. Firstly, that a nation instructing its soldiers to “steal corn from the fields” has somehow managed, in complete secrecy, to expedite such a rapid development in its nuclear program that the power of its weapons has increased fivefold in eighteen months.

The second possibility is that they’ve had outside help.

Given that Pyongyang’s gloating publicity pictures immediately made me think that Sean Connery was about to burst in and beat up the bad guys, I’m pretty confident that, as usual, China is the hidden director behind this latest international drama.

Politics

Revealed – the World’s Biggest Blowhard (and it’s not Donald Trump)

8 July 201715 May 2020 - by Charles Naton - Leave a Comment

Either large swathes of the media class have lost their ability to reason clearly, or they are deliberately choosing to ignore the wealth of evidence that suggests North Korea is nowhere near as combat ready as it would have the world believe.

Now I’ll admit that’s a pretty bold statement, but that insular country’s latest missile launch is a perfect example of rhetoric leaving reality far behind. Let’s abandon the spin and consider the known facts for a moment.

We know that on Tuesday morning, North Korea launched what appears to be some kind of intercontinental ballistic missile. Given that country’s pathological propensity for pretentious self-aggrandisement, does anyone think it a little odd that the only record of that momentous, paradigm shifting event is a single series of still photographs? I do.

Let’s not forget that we’re talking about a country whose biggest export appears to be video footage of its seemingly endless parades celebrating this or that glorious revolutionary whatever. We’ve all seen those terrifying looking trucks trundling past the camera dozens of times now…trundling past mind, not actually performing in the field anywhere. For a nation that defines itself by its military might, its air force seems painfully shy at these bombastic occasions…funny that.