Showing posts with label US. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US. Show all posts

Friday, February 11, 2022

China Calles on US To Stop Selling Weapons To Taiwan

 Both Sides of Taiwan Strait Are Closely Watching Ukraine’s Crisis


​Taiwan knows what it’s like to have an overbearing neighbor. China wonders how forcefully Western powers might react to a Russian invasion.

Feb. 7 - With Russia massing troops along Ukraine’s borders, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan felt compelled to act.

She ordered the creation of a task force to study how the confrontation thousands of miles away in Europe could affect Taiwan’s longstanding conflict with its larger, vastly more powerful neighbor.

“Taiwan has faced military threats and intimidation from China for a long time,” Ms. Tsai told a gathering of her national security advisers late last month, according to a statement by her office.


Perhaps more than people in any other place in the world, Taiwanese know what it is like to live in the shadow of an overbearing power, with China claiming the island as its own. Ms. Tsai added, “we empathize with Ukraine’s situation”...     more on New York Times


实锤!F-35C坠海视频曝光 美再次对台军售 中国三部委回应!20220209 |《今日关注》CCTV中文国际
Feb 10, 2022
China Calles on US To Stop Selling Weapons To Taiwan

Feb. 8 - On Tuesday, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that China condemns the United States' plan of selling 100 million U.S. dollars in armament to Taiwan, calling for immediate cancellation.

​Zhao Lijian spokesperson noted that the current selling traffic of the U.S. to Taiwan severely infringes the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint communique, especially the August 17 Communique.

"Such acts seriously undermine China's sovereignty and security interests and gravely harm China-U.S. relations as well as peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," exposed Zhao.


China appealed to the United States to stay bound to the one-China principle and the three China-U.S. joint arrangements and instantaneously stop the arms-sale plan and quit the military ties with the Taiwan region.     quoted from teleSUR



Stealth aircraft are designed to avoid detection using a variety of technologies that reduce reflection/emission of radarinfrared,[1] visible light, radio frequency (RF) spectrum, and audio, collectively known as stealth technology.[2] The F-117 Nighthawk was the first operational aircraft specifically designed around stealth technology. Other examples of stealth aircraft include the B-2 Spirit, the F-22 Raptor,[3] the F-35 Lightning II,[4] the Chengdu J-20,[5] and the Sukhoi Su-57.     quoted from Wikipedia





What Happens When a Stealth Jet Ends Up on the Ocean Floor?
​Here’s how the Navy might recover a $94 million F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that crashed in China’s backyard.

Feb. 10 - On Jan. 24, one of the U.S. Navy’s most expensive warplanes crashed as it tried to land on an aircraft carrier and sank to the bottom of the South China Sea. The $94 million F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is now the subject of a salvage operation.

In a statement issued on the day of the incident, the Navy said seven sailors had been injured when the jet suffered a “landing mishap” on the aircraft carrier, the Carl Vinson. It did not mention that the plane had ended up in the ocean.

​The Navy has said little publicly since then about the incident. In response to questions from The New York Times, the Navy’s Seventh Fleet said last week that the service had “begun mobilizing units that will be used to verify the site and recover” the F-35 involved in the crash...     more on The New York Times


What’s behind the South China Sea dispute? | Start Here
Nov 22, 2020


Hunter Biden sought ‘forever’ deal with China military-tied firm: emails

Feb. 8 - Hunter Biden tried to strike an exceedingly lucrative, “forever” business deal with a state-owned Chinese energy company that’s since been sanctioned by the US over its ties to the Chinese military, according to the latest emails unearthed from his infamous laptop.

​The plan would have apparently also involved the then-prime minister of Kazakhstan, who was arrested on suspicion of treason last month following his ouster as head of the country’s intelligence service.

The emails date to April 2014, when Biden’s dad, President Biden, was vice president and about a year before father and son apparently posed for a photo with the Kazakhstani official, Karim Massimov, in a Washington, DC, restaurant.

The correspondence shows Hunter Biden and then-business partner Devon Archer — who has since cooperated in a tax probe of the first son — discussing an offer to help find “investment opportunities” for the China National Offshore Oil Corp.


That same month, both men were appointed to the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings — which paid Biden as much as $1 million a year — and Archer suggested that a deal involving the two overseas firms would set them up for life.

“If we can connect the dots here between CNOOC and Bursima we can do only that, forever,” Archer wrote on April 8, 2014.

Less than 10 minutes later, Biden responded: “Thinking the same thing, fraught with many land mines- but…”

“Many…don’t even know if we could pull it off but it’s a major option,” Archer wrote back...     more on New Your Post


US imposes sanctions on China's CNOOC oil company over South China Sea

​The US said the sanctions were a response to China's increased naval activity in the region. The move comes just days before Joe Biden is set to take over as US president.

​Date published on Jan. 2021

The US government on Thursday slapped more sanctions on Chinese firms and military officials over Beijing's actions in the South China Sea.

At the center of the wide-ranging sanctions was China's state-owned oil company, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), which was added to a US Commerce Department blacklist forbidding business with US citizens.


However, a US official said the sanctions on the CNOOC do not target hydrocarbon exploration or joint ventures outside the
South China Sea.

"The United States stands with Southeast Asian claimant states seeking to defend their sovereign rights and interests, consistent with international law," said US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. "We will continue to act until we see Beijing cease its coercive behavior in the South China Sea."

Pompeo said the sanctions were directed against those "responsible for, or complicit in, either the large-scale reclamation, construction, or militarization of disputed outposts in the South China Sea, or (China's) use of coercion against Southeast Asian claimants to inhibit their access to offshore resources in the South China Sea"...     more on DW


Why China and the US are at odds over Taiwan | Start Here
Nov 8, 2021

Friday, January 21, 2022

The Paracels | Jan. 21, 2022

 


US Navy warship challenges Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea

Jan. 21 - ..The USS Benfold sailed around the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, in what the Navy calls a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP), Lt. Mark Langford, spokesperson for the US 7th Fleet, said in the statement...

...The islands are also claimed by Vietnam and self-ruled Taiwan but in Chinese hands for more than 46 years. The islands have been fortified with People's Liberation Army (PLA) military installations.

The US Navy statement said the Benfold also challenged the claims of Vietnam and Taiwan.

"All three claimants require either permission or advance notification before a military vessel engages in 'innocent passage' through the territorial sea. Under international law ... the ships of all states -- including their warships -- enjoy the right of innocent passage through the territorial sea. The unilateral imposition of any authorization or advance-notification requirement for innocent passage is unlawful," the US Navy statement said.

Asserting freedom of navigation rights involves sailing within the 12-mile territorial limit from a nation's coastline recognized by international law...     more from BBC news



The name Paracel is of Portuguese origin, and appears on 16th-century Portuguese maps. The archipelago is approximately equidistant from the coastlines of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and Vietnam; and approximately one-third of the way from central Vietnam to the northern Philippines.[5] The archipelago includes Dragon Hole, the deepest underwater sinkhole in the world.[6][7] Turtles and seabirds are native to the islands, which have a hot and humid climate, abundant rainfall and frequent typhoonsThe archipelago is surrounded by productive fishing grounds and a seabed with potential, but as yet unexplored, oil and gas reserves.     quoted from Wikipedia

Architecture, development and geological control of the Xisha carbonate platforms, northwestern South China Sea

Newly acquired seismic data allow improved understanding of the architecture and evolution of isolated carbonate platforms on the continental slope of the northern South China Sea. The Xisha carbonate platforms initiated on a basement high, the Xisha Uplift, in the early Miocene and have remained active to the present. Their distribution is limited to pre-existing localized, fault-bounded blocks within the Xisha Uplift so individual platforms were small in size at the beginning of the Miocene. However, during the middle Miocene, the platform carbonate factories flourished across an extensive area with 55,900 km2. The platforms began to backstep in response to a relative sea-level rise in the late Miocene. Platform-edge reefs, patch reefs, pinnacle reefs, atoll reefs and horseshoe reefs, all developed on various platforms. The distribution of platform carbonates shrank significantly during Pliocene-Quaternary time to isolated carbonate platforms, represented today by Xuande Atoll and Yongle Atoll. Tectonics and eustasy were the two main controls on platform development. Tectonics controlled both the initial topography for reef growth and the distribution of platforms, including those that survived the drowning event associated with the late Miocene rapid relative sea-level rise. Eustasy controlled high-frequency carbonate sequence development.

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