I don't know how WION News and its "Gravitas" broadcasts appeared on my radar, but I've been watching its short segments on YouTube with interest. WION, a bit like SKY News Australia, makes no bones about its biases and agenda, which is refreshingly honest compared to the slanted US news media outlets that disgustingly insist they are only being fair and objective. WION's anchor Palki Sharma Upadhyay—who goes by "Palki Sharma" on Twitter and other media—sounds Indian (she has a South Asian accent, and I can't distinguish among Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi, etc., accents); more specifically, she often sounds like an angry Indian housewife. Normally, that wouldn't be pleasant to my ears, but she's been venting her spleen at China so often that I might be slowly falling in love with her and her passion. Heh. Here's her latest—a litany of China's recent acts of aggression:
I keep telling people who thoughtlessly claim the US is "imperialist" that, if they want to see what real imperialism looks like, they need look no further than China—expansionistic, militaristic China, with its devil's-bargain Belt and Road Initiative that saddles signatory countries with massive debt while giving China all sorts of in-country access and other advantages. China, with its aggressive territorial claims in the South China Sea and elsewhere. China, with its rape and murder of Tibet by using the "Tibet was originally Chinese" strategy. China, which growls like a feral cur at anyone who speaks of Hong Kong and Taiwan as somehow distinct from the mainland and its soul-sucking CCP government. China, which drools over the prospect of acquiring a collapsing North Korea, and has even dispatched Chinese "scholars" who, in prepping for a takeover, have claimed that the Korean Koguryo Dynasty was originally Chinese. That, folks, is real imperialism. You might bitterly respond that America has an imperialist past. Maybe. That's a topic for another time. But America today isn't imperialistic by any stretch of the imagination. Not by the standards of ancient Rome, not by the standards of the British Empire, and certainly not by the standards of modern China.
ADDENDUM: more angry Indian housewife here:
Perhaps that is one upside of the Wuhan virus outbreak--China's mask has slipped revealing the ugliness of her true nature to the world. One can hope.
ReplyDeletePresident Duterte of the Philippines is China's bitch which has been as surprising as it is disappointing. He talks tough but has acquiesced to China's expansion in the South China Sea and has sold out the country's infrastructure for China's financial "support". As I understand it, China could literally shut off the national electric power grid should the Philippines default repaying loans.
When it comes to China the world had better wake up to the fact that Winter is Coming.
Do the Philippines have a Belt and Road arrangement with China?
ReplyDeleteTechnically, no. But there are a lot of contracts awarded to Chinese firms under terms that are not really favorable to the Philippines. I've seen it argued that Japan was willing to do the work for less, but Duterte is in China's pocket. I don't know how true that is but the fact that China continues to build and militarize in the South China Sea in historically Philippines territorial waters while Durtete turns a blind eye is worrisome.
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