RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jun/04/australia-will-continue-to-welcome-hong-kong-residents-as-calls-mount-to-match-uks-offer-of-safe-haven

The Australian government has declared it will “continue to welcome” Hong Kong residents, but it won’t be drawn on calls for it to match the UK’s offer of safe haven for people fearing China’s planned security laws.

Australian parliamentarians from across the political spectrum are urging the government to help the people of Hong Kong, amid growing international concern about the impact of Beijing’s decision on the city’s rights and freedoms and on the stability of the international finance hub.

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, revealed he had asked Australia and other partners to consider “burden-sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong”.

The UK is holding open the prospect of offering residency and work rights to as many as 3 million people, while the US is considering letting people who no longer “feel comfortable” in Hong Kong to move there. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, indicated he was also talking to allies, including Australia, about further responses.

On Wednesday Beijing lodged “stern representations” in response to the UK’s offer, warning it to “pull back before it’s too late, abandon its Cold War and colonialist mentality”.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/04/woke_capitalists_sell_out_us_to_china_behind_a_mask_of_virtue.html

Imagine thinking that the appropriate response to the Chinese coronavirus is to wed ourselves still closer to Communist China. For most, such a notion would defy all logic. Yet if woke capital gets its way, this is the future we can expect, with attendant consequences like the ones we are currently suffering—and far worse.

As the Chinese coronavirus crisis unfolded, Americans grew overwhelmingly outraged at the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for its primary culpability in the spread of a disease inflicting incalculable damage on the country. Main Street began to reckon with the reality that ever-closer economic relations with China had left us dependent on it for the most basic of necessities, and Main Street seemed to wish to extricate itself from the toxic relationship. But Wall Street was not interested in such a divorce. Rather, it sought to deepen relations further.

Paradigmatic were the words of Larry Fink, chief executive officer of the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock. Fink, writing in a March 29, 2020, letter to shareholders, stated:

I continue to firmly believe China will be one of the biggest opportunities for BlackRock over the long term, both for asset managers and investors…. We continue to invest in our presence in China and our local investment expertise, so we can help clients navigate this large and growing opportunity as they seek to increase exposure to China’s onshore assets. We are also focused on building our presence as a manager for Chinese clients…. [A]s the Chinese market opens to foreign asset managers, our global reach and whole-portfolio approach will help us become the leading foreign asset manager in China.

That is, BlackRock remained all-in on Beijing.

The positioning of this portion of Fink’s letter was quite telling. He had opened by recognizing that the implications of the coronavirus were far-reaching. Yet somehow, they did not extend to the Middle Kingdom.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2020/06/the-red-elephant-in-the-room/

While COVID-19 has wrought havoc across the world, one of the things we can be thankful for is that it has exposed the true character of the dangerous red elephant in the room: the Chinese communist regime.

Before we go any further, let’s clarify that by “China”, I am referring to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), not the Chinese people. There is a clear difference, and this is critical.

At the time I am writing this, there are 785,712 cases of COVID-19 worldwide. Countless Chinese citizens who have spoken out about China’s negligence in dealing with the virus have been imprisoned, and some probably killed. Stephen Lee Myers from the New York Times writes: “The central health authorities first learned about the outbreak not from the reporting system but after unknown whistle-blowers leaked two internal documents online.”

While it is clear that Wuhan is home to a CCP-owned virology lab, it’s not clear whether this is where the virus originated, and whether it was indeed manufactured as a biological weapon. Regardless, China is exploiting the current state of international instability and insecurity to expand and advance its objectives and power. This ought to be no surprise, since China’s international ambitions are simply an extension of its domestic policy—authoritarian control.