In the course of the recently concluded National People’s Congress in Beijing, dictator Xi Jinping and his new Foreign Minister Qin Gong made a point of threatening the United States. Xi specifically accused the U.S. of leading Western countries in “containing, encircling and suppressing China.” For his part, Qin warned that conflict is “inevitable” unless America “changes course.”
Unfortunately, such bellicose rhetoric is being accompanied by actions that are clearly designed to give the CCP the option to wage not only the “unrestricted warfare” in which it has been engaged for decades against our country, but the shooting kind, as well. Publicly evident examples of what should be considered “indicators and warnings” of preparations for violent – and, in all likelihood, preemptive – Chinese action include the following:
- Heightened PLA military operations and exercises suggesting a determined effort both to intimidate opponents and enhance the readiness of active duty and reserve forces, paramilitary and supporting “civil-military”-fused industrial assets and infrastructure;
- Video of a secret, senior-level mobilization-planning session in Guangdong Province
- Chinese hoarding of food, fertilizers, critical minerals and other commodities, equipment, etc. that would be particularly valuable during and after war
- Restrictions on supply chains exporting such stuff
- Increased activity in Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure that suggests ports, airfields and other assets around the world are being readied to support CCP power-projection
- Evidence that it is becoming more difficult to repatriate dollars invested in China
- Intensified Chinese espionage and intelligence activity in and over the U.S.
- Intensified Chinese elite capture and influence operations inside the U.S.
This CPDC webinar examines these and related topics – and the necessity for the United States to adopt a war-footing, both to enhance our deterrent to the CCP actually initiating hostilities and, if necessary, to defeat the perpetrators.
North Korea has claimed that about 800,000 of its citizens have volunteered to join or reenlist in the nation’s military to fight against the United States.
About 800,000 students and workers, on Friday alone, across the country expressed a desire to enlist or reenlist in the military to counter the United States, North Korea’s state newspaper Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported on Saturday.
The claim came after North Korea on Thursday launched its Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in response to ongoing US-South Korea military drills.
North Korea fired the ICBM into the sea between the Korean peninsula and Japan on Thursday, hours before South Korea’s president flew to Tokyo for a summit that discussed ways to counter the nuclear-armed North.
The North’s ballistic missiles are banned under United Nations Security Council resolutions and the launch drew condemnation from governments in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo.
South Korean and American forces began 11 days of joint drills, dubbed “Freedom Shield 23,” on Monday, held on a scale not seen since 2017 to counter the North’s growing threats.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accused the United States and South Korea of increasing tensions with the military drills.
North Korea often responds to what it sees as “provocations” by the US by making bellicose threats. Experts say that in addition to the joint military exercises and the meeting this week between South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japan’s leader Fumio Kishida it has taken exception to US President Joe Biden’s plan to host Yoon and his wife at the White House next month.
The state visit will be the second of Biden’s presidency, underscoring close ties between the US and South Korea, and will take place April 26. The conservative Yoon and his administration have made strengthening the US-South Korea alliance a key foreign policy priority. Biden, likewise, has sought to nurture the relationship, including with the symbolic marker of his trip to Seoul in May 2022, his first stop on his inaugural trip to Asia as president.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, told CNN recently that in response to the drills and the summits, Pyongyang might “order missile firings of longer ranges, attempt a spy satellite launch, demonstrate a solid-fuel engine, and perhaps even conduct a nuclear test.”