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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17229/china-iran-challenge

According to a leaked draft of the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement, circulated last year, Iran will receive $400 billion dollars in Chinese investments over the next 25 years in key Iranian economic sectors, including energy, telecommunications, defense, infrastructure, banking, petrochemicals, railways and ports. According to the leaked draft, there will be also an expansion of military assistance, training and intelligence-sharing. Nearly 100 projects are cited in the draft. In return, Iran will commit to providing regular and heavily discounted oil, gas and possibly other natural resources to China.

“Strategically, the BRI is how China is seeking to collapse Western-American dominance in the region peacefully… the BRI is a sophisticated Chinese plan to transfer hegemony from the West and the U.S. to China without war or conflict”. — Dr. Mordechai Chaziz, author of China’s Middle East Diplomacy: The Belt and Road Strategic Partnership, thediplomat.com, March 10, 2021.

The timing seems hardly a coincidence, but rather an outcome of the Biden administration’s appeasing overtures to Iran with its formal offer of restarting nuclear talks. The signing of the agreement itself can be seen as a Chinese-Iranian act of defiance against the US, undercutting sanctions against Iran by supplying the regime with an economic lifeline, while showing China off as an active global power that is able and willing to stand up to the US.

For China, Iran is a welcome counterbalance to US influence in the region, as the only large regional power that is not aligned with the US, in addition to having enormous oil and natural gas resources and providing a large market of more than 80 million citizens for Chinese goods.

“China is pivoting towards more autocratic regimes that represent greater stability for its supply lines than democracies that are, or may become, hostile to Beijing.” — Verisk Maplecroft risk consultancy firm, March 17, 2021.

On March 27, China and Iran signed a comprehensive strategic 25-year partnership agreement on economic and security cooperation. The agreement was signed in Tehran, where China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi was visiting as part of his tour of the Middle East.

Details of the agreement were not immediately published. The Iranian Foreign Ministry communicated that it was a “roadmap for cooperation” and that no “contracts” were included in it. “Prospects for cooperation, whether economic, political, cultural or strategic, have not been quantified, therefore it does not include numbers on investment or financial and monetary resources,” a statement of the Iranian Foreign Ministry reported.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-troop-movements-on-ukraine-border-test-biden-administration-11617230084

Russia has begun mobilizing troops along its border with Ukraine, presenting a fresh challenge at the Biden administration and threatening to upend a cease-fire between Ukraine and pro-Russian fighters.

The move follows escalated fighting along the demarcation line inside Ukraine, where one attack last week killed four Ukrainian soldiers and wounded two.

In response, Ukraine said Tuesday it had put its own forces on alert and was reinforcing units in eastern Ukraine and on the border with the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea.

While Mr. Biden has wrestled with Kremlin machinations such as a massive suspected Russian hack of U.S. government computer systems and the assessment by U.S. intelligence that Moscow attempted to interfere in the 2020 election, the situation in Ukraine is the first involving movements of Russian troops. Russia has denied meddling in the election and denied responsibility for the hack.

In Washington, a State Department spokesman said the department was discussing the situation with NATO allies.

“We are concerned by recent escalations of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, including violations of the July 2020 cease-fire that led to the deaths of four Ukrainian soldiers on March 26 and the wounding of two others,” a State Department spokesman said.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wuhan-whitewash-11617142921?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The World Health Organization on Tuesday finally released its report on the origins of the coronavirus, and the result wasn’t worth the wait. The document is best understood as a whitewash heavily influenced by the Chinese Communist Party and Westerners with conflicts of interest.

The report—based primarily on an international team’s visit this year to the city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected—has little new information. But the team analyzes four origin scenarios.

The report says the most likely origin was a transfer to humans through bats with an intermediary host. The second most probable, according to the report, is that bats directly transmitted Covid-19 to humans. The report also takes too seriously a third theory, pushed by Beijing, that the virus arrived in China in frozen food, which the WHO claims is “possible” and merits more study.

Most telling is that the team concludes it is “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from a lab such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The report simply asserts that WIV facilities “were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring programme.” The report suggests “regular administrative and internal review of high-level biosafety laboratories worldwide” and following up on new evidence.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17219/china-free-speech-europe

The current standoff is, in essence, about the future of free speech in Europe. If notoriously feckless European officials fail to stand firm in the face of mounting Chinese pressure, Europeans who dare publicly to criticize the CCP in the future can expect to pay an increasingly high personal cost for doing so.

“As long as human rights are being violated, I cannot stay silent. These sanctions prove that China is sensitive to pressure. Let this be an encouragement to all my European colleagues: Speak out!” — Dutch lawmaker Sjoerd Sjoerdsma.

“It is our duty to call out the Chinese government’s human rights abuses in Hong Kong and their genocide of the Uighur people. Those of us who live free lives under the rule of law must speak for those who have no voice.” — Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith.

“Beijing’s strategy is to simply crush and silence any global opposition to its atrocity by inflicting crushingly punitive measures on anyone who speaks out. A very concerning development.” — Adrian Zenz, German scholar.

“It is telling that China now responds to even moderate criticism with sanctions, rather than attempting to defend its actions in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.” — China Research Group.

“For far too long the EU has believed in the illusion of a middle ground.” — Lea Dauber, Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“In plain language: Beijing wants to decide who in Europe can talk or write about China.” — Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

“Beijing’s sanctions against the UK and EU — targeting MPs, academics, even legal groups — show the regime of Xi Jinping will not tolerate dissent from anyone, anywhere.” — Sophia Yan, China correspondent for the Telegraph.

“Beijing’s message is unmistakable: You must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China’s borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a ‘high degree of autonomy’ for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it’s to lobby them on Beijing’s behalf.” — Matt Pottinger, former deputy White House national security adviser, Wall Street Journal.

China has imposed sanctions on more than two dozen European and British lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move comes after the European Union and the United Kingdom imposed sanctions on Chinese officials for human rights abuses in China’s Xinjiang region.

China contends that its sanctions are tit for tat — morally equivalent retaliation — in response to those imposed by Western countries. This is false. The European sanctions are for crimes against humanity, whereas the Chinese sanctions seek to silence European critics of the Chinese Communist Party.

The current standoff is, in essence, about the future of free speech in Europe. If notoriously feckless European officials fail to stand firm in the face of mounting Chinese pressure, Europeans who dare publicly to criticize the CCP in the future can expect to pay an increasingly high personal cost for doing so.

On March 22, the European Union and the United Kingdom announced (here and here) that they had imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials accused of responsibility for abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a remote autonomous region in northwestern China.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-wuhan-whitewash-11617142921?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The World Health Organization on Tuesday finally released its report on the origins of the coronavirus, and the result wasn’t worth the wait. The document is best understood as a whitewash heavily influenced by the Chinese Communist Party and Westerners with conflicts of interest.

The report—based primarily on an international team’s visit this year to the city of Wuhan, where Covid-19 was first detected—has little new information. But the team analyzes four origin scenarios.

The report says the most likely origin was a transfer to humans through bats with an intermediary host. The second most probable, according to the report, is that bats directly transmitted Covid-19 to humans. The report also takes too seriously a third theory, pushed by Beijing, that the virus arrived in China in frozen food, which the WHO claims is “possible” and merits more study.

Most telling is that the team concludes it is “extremely unlikely” that the virus leaked from a lab such as the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). The report simply asserts that WIV facilities “were well-managed, with a staff health monitoring programme.” The report suggests “regular administrative and internal review of high-level biosafety laboratories worldwide” and following up on new evidence.

Yet enough already is known about the WIV to suggest this lacks credibility. In 2018 U.S. officials warned in diplomatic cables about safety and management issues at the WIV that could lead to a pandemic. This is especially troubling because the WIV conducted “gain of function” research on coronaviruses that theoretically can enable them to infect a new species.

The U.S. State Department warned in a January fact sheet that WIV researchers had developed “symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses” in autumn 2019. The WHO report nonetheless takes the Chinese government at its word when it says there was “no reporting of COVID-19 compatible respiratory illness during the weeks/months prior to December 2019.”