What Beijing's Fast Cash Can Buy: CCP Is Changing the Nature of Sovereignty

[Ellanjay]

Warships and fighter jets of Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy take part in a military display in the South China Sea on April 12, 2018. (Reuters)

China’s Aggression Is Changing the Nature of Sovereignty


Kiribati in the Pacific Islands is an object lesson
Anders Corr

November 26, 2021

News Analysis
mp3 PDF

Kiribati is dumping a 158,000-square-mile World Heritage marine reserve, the Pacific Islands Forum, and its friendship with Taiwan. Why? The archipelagic state is trading its sovereignty for Beijing’s fast cash.

The sovereignty of Kiribati, a nation of islands in the South Pacific between China and the United States, is being submerged not principally by the waves of global warming, as many fear, but by Beijing’s illiberal influence. Unlike the storms on a rising sea that build islands by successive layers of sand, Beijing is capturing Kiribati with waves of cash.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will not willingly return what it takes through purchase. So the citizens of Kiribati, and the rest of the world, must get much tougher, much more quickly, if we are to defend Kiribati’s democracy and sovereignty. What applies to Kiribati, the canary in a coal mine, will eventually apply to the capitals of Europe and North America.

This article uses the case of Kiribati to argue for what to this author’s knowledge is a philosophical first: support for an autocracy that seeks hegemony should void a country’s sovereignty. A similar approach should be taken to physical persons and corporations: support for hegemonic autocracy should be illegal and have criminal consequences.


Anyone who sells out democracy should go to prison, and any country that does the same will, one way or another, lose its sovereignty. Kiribati is an object lesson in this sad trend of contemporary international relations.

As preparation for breaking this new philosophical ground, consider these facts in the case of Kiribati.

The Case of Kiribati


On Nov. 11, exclusive reporting by 1News revealed documents that show the Kiribati government deregistering a World Heritage site that is a massive 158,000-square-mile marine reserve. The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) will now be exploited by not only illegal, but commercial, fishing.

China, which engages in massive amounts of illegal fishing globally, facilitated by fossil fuel subsidies of its fishing fleet, will likely benefit from not only the exploitation of the newly vulnerable and pristine fishing grounds, but from their military potential. China’s PLA Air Force (PLAAF) and Navy (PLAN) could in particular use Kiribati’s prime military basing because it is adjacent to U.S. waters, and strategically located midway between Australia and Hawaii.

According to documents obtained by 1News, Kiribati’s cabinet informed PIPA that it would be deregistered. That confidential communication came in late October, and was only revealed publicly when New Zealand’s 1News discovered it this month.

Alex Gray, former U.S. National Security Council chief of staff and an expert on the Pacific Islands, responded to the news by saying that “China is the world’s greatest ecological menace, from its devastating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing around the world, to its consistent undermining of global norms that protect delicate ecosystems like Antarctica and the deep seabed. The U.S. and its partners must confront China’s attack on the ecology of the world’s most vulnerable places and not remain silent on this defining issue.”

As Gray previously noted in The Diplomat, Beijing’s influence in the Pacific Islands is not only ecological, but political. The regime is inclined “to exert leverage over these tiny islands,” he wrote.

According to the 1News report by Barbara Dreaver, “There’s deep concern that the move [to deregister the reserve] has been driven by China. PIPA is attractive to China not only for its fishing wealth but its strategically significant location near US military installations.”

Defense analyst Anna Powles at Massey University in New Zealand told 1News that “Kiribati has real strategic value to China if it could potentially develop some strategic infrastructure on Kanton Island which has commercial fishery usage but potential military usage as well.”

Kanton Island was previously a U.S. and British military base, just 1,600 miles southwest of Hawaii. The United States used the tiny island—then spelled Canton after an American whaling ship that wrecked on the atoll in 1854—as an emergency air base and anti-ballistic missile tracking station.

In Violating Kiribati’s Sovereignty, Beijing Breaks China’s Promise of 1948


The United States voluntarily relinquished its military base on Kiribati’s Kanton atoll due to American ideals of a world of independent sovereign democracies, found in part within the 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The writing of that declaration was led by the United States and involved close participation from participants of France, Canada, nationalist China, and Lebanon. The formal drafting eventually enlarged to include Australia, Chile, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union. Nationalist China and the Soviet Union supported the declaration, which recognized democracy as a human right, arguably as part of the bargain that welcomed these autocracies into leadership positions of the international community.

Now Russia and communist China are going back on their word and rejecting this foundational United Nations document, on which other U.N. principles such as territorial integrity and non-interference that they sometimes support are predicated.

Beijing continues to grab the territory of its neighbors in Asia against international principles such as territorial integrity and exclusive economic zones (EEZs), and it flagrantly violates the 1948 declaration and international law against genocide.

Kiribati Would Make a Useful Chinese Military Base


On and around Kanton atoll and the other Pacific Islands, Beijing manifests its disregard for sovereignty through illegal fishing, the attempted bribing of entire democracies with millions of dollars in cash, and the use of Chinese funding for an upgraded airstrip that could be used by the PLAAF and PLAN as a convenient jumping-off spot for Hawaii.

The Chinese could use the Kiribati islands as it does its artificial islands in the South China Sea: as bases for missiles, bombers, jet fighters, submarines, and aircraft carriers. Kiribati extends China’s military reach uncomfortably close to Honolulu, which hosts the U.S. military headquarters for all of Asia. [More to see mp3 / PDF ]

 

[Ellanjay]

CCP Influence in Congress


A tall security fence surrounds the U.S. Capitol ahead of President Joe Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress in Washington, on April 28, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

CCP Influence in Congress


Proposed protections in the House stalled by Democrats

Anders Corr

November 27, 2021

News Analysis

U.S. congresspersons are finally pushing to remove the malign influence of foreign money in the American political system.

Representative Lance Gooden (R-Texas) recently introduced legislation to require think tanks to disclose foreign money received, according to a statement by Representative Jim Banks (R-Ind.), who is pushing for a Truth in Testimony resolution that requires congressional witnesses to divulge their sources of foreign funding.

Those funded by the adversaries of America—including China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba—would face extra scrutiny.

Representative Mike Johnson (R-La.) proposes to prohibit lobbying by former members of Congress on the part of communist regimes.



A group of House Republicans wants to strengthen the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Some Democrats support the measures, but quietly so far. Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, who often writes on foreign influence issues, wrote an opinion published on Nov. 23, demanding that Democrats use their majority to take action on this bipartisan issue.

“Dozens of D.C. think tanks and other policy organizations take money from foreign countries and corporations without ever disclosing the details,” Rogin wrote. “The staffers who have received this financing then write policy papers and testify before Congress, posing as objective, disinterested experts.”

Congressman Banks said the proposed rules “would allow Committees to know when individuals are being paid for consulting or advising services to Chinese companies with internal CCP [Chinese Communist Party] committees, or companies such as Huawei and Tencent. It would also encompass witnesses who perform consulting work for oligarchs in … adversarial nations, which is often not disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act [LDA] or FARA.”

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) on Capitol Hill on March 27, 2019. (York Du/NTD)


Lack of transparency is even worse in the Senate, which does not require witnesses to divulge foreign conflicts of interest, and apparently has no plans to do so.

Think tanks that refuse foreign funding—for example, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the American Foreign Policy Council—support the additional transparency on the Hill.

Banks is leading demands for the House reform. He said in his statement: “Witnesses appearing before committees are often able to skirt disclosure requirements. … This is problematic considering [the] Chinese Communist Party’s disinformation operations in the United States include funding Washington D.C. think tanks.”

Banks continued, “The U.S. China Security and Economic Commission has noted that a number of Washington D.C. think tanks and universities have received funding from Tung Cheehwa, a vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which is a group that directs the United Front Work Department.”

The rule changes are a step in the right direction, but even they don’t go far enough.

U.S. Air Force Academy Professor Jahara Matisek, whose forthcoming book “Old and New Battlespaces” addresses the issue of foreign influence in the United States, commented that “From a national security perspective, all foreign money (and even big corporate money) should be kept out because it skews American democracy, not to mention skewing domestic and foreign policies that benefit other countries and elites at the expense of the average American.”

The most effective lobbyists for Beijing in Washington are U.S. corporations that export to China and want the American government to look the other way—for example, on the issue of the CCP’s multiple genocides—so as not to derail the gravy train of $600 billion in annual U.S.-China trade and $2.3 trillion in U.S. institutional investments in China.

Matisek wrote that “US national security is not taken that seriously by either political party in the US, precisely because the incentive structures are upside down. No politicians seem to be punished by their electorate for [bad] national security outcomes.”

So even the Republican proposals do not go far enough.

The penalty for lying on disclosure forms that they propose is only a ban on speaking before the same committee for three years. Perjury is a more serious offense, especially on matters of national security. Anyone who purposefully lies to Congress should spend time in prison.

Professors at American universities, which receive extensive funding from China through individual student tuition that the CCP can turn on or off, would likely be exempt under the new rules.

Politically influential professors, who can make millions of dollars in outside contracts with foreign governments, should have to report this publicly. Professors at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, for example, are not required to publicly disclose foreign funding, even as they often appear as media and congressional experts on national security matters.

Greater transparency about foreign revenues should also apply to corporate experts. Everyone who is politically influential in the United States, if they receive any foreign money, should have to disclose that funding. At risk is the future of freedom.

Anders Corr has a bachelor’s/master’s in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored “The Concentration of Power” (forthcoming in 2021) and “No Trespassing,” and edited “Great Powers, Grand Strategies.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/ccp-in...s_4124095.html


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[reedak]

My great friend, do you think China's almighty fast cash has bought over the Chinese "falling gong"?