Need to blame someone for something? Just shout ‘China’
- If Western politicians are right, Beijing is behind the student protests in the US, responsible for preventing a British MP from visiting Djibouti and ‘fuelling the largest armed conflict in Europe since WWII’
By now, I am beginning to think Western politicians and leaders may actually have daily and weekly quotas to drum up the “China threat”. As a result, many appear to be finding it difficult to fill them and so have had to resort to highly implausible and increasingly silly claims.
Students from at least 20 universities across the United States are staging peaceful protests – which have led to hundreds of arrests and some accusations of police brutality – against their government’s complicity in Israel’s acts of genocide in Gaza.
Gen Z is awakening to the atrocities Washington commits, or supplies funds and weapons to help its client states to commit, around the world.
But, according to Florida Republican congressman Carlos Gimenez, China is behind the US nationwide protests.
In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Mornings with Maria, he said: “Don’t be surprised if you actually look really deep into who’s funding, that the CCP is involved, the Communist Chinese Party.”
When asked by host Maria Bartiromo about the source(s) of his claim, he replied, “I got some information that, yes, that somehow, through another organisation, the CCP actually funds that organisation who is funding these people.”
Well, if a US hard-right politician says so, it must be true then, no?
Meanwhile, Tim Loughton, a hawkish British Conservative member of parliament, was denied entry to Djibouti.
He was “detained and deported” at the Djibouti airport, which sounds much more threatening. He reportedly spent “an hour without any explanation in the arrivals hall” and three more alone in a holding room before being put on the next available flight home.
Four hours! That’s illegal imprisonment. Someone please call Amnesty International.
As he wrote of his “ordeal” in the Telegraph, “I politely explained that I would be in the country for barely 24 hours, was being picked up at the airport by a tour guide for a visit to Africa’s lowest point, Lake Assal, before checking into one of the country’s most overpriced hotels where I was meeting the British ambassador for a debrief to boot.”
Instead, he was made “to wait in the spartan departure lounge” for the next flight home.
“Overpriced”? Well, I guess the whole trip was on British taxpayers. The British ambassador and Loughton must never have heard of Zoom, Skype or some such web service with a secure link.
As Beijing’s ‘Made in China 2025’ plan nears finish line, how well has it done?
And horror of horrors, he had to wait in “the spartan departure lounge”. What, no fancy American Express VIP lounge at Djibouti airport!
So, why was he denied entry? Could it be because he had previously criticised the economic and human rights records of the country’s government, as well as its ties with China?
Actually, it’s not at all clear why. But Loughton has with great certainty blamed China, for “the malign and all-encompassing tentacles of the Chinese regime at home and abroad”, or so he wrote. Hmm, Mr Loughton, I think you meant the US.
Chinese intelligence and the foreign ministry must have got their Djibouti counterpoints to kick him out of the country because, as he wrote, “an annoying yet insignificant British MP turns up in the neighbourhood having spouted support for the integrity of Somaliland and casting aspersions about China’s real intentions in the region then of course Djibouti wants to stick it to him”.
“Integrity of Somaliland”? Yes, he explains, because it diplomatically recognises Taiwan. It’s good to know Somaliland has more integrity than Djibouti. But how would anyone know one way or another?
I guess Beijing really is a busybody for going through all that trouble against this “annoying yet insignificant British MP”.
We have all heard of the egocentrism of British politicians, but Loughton really takes the cake. Many British broadsheets, though, have simply reported his claims about China interference without any verification or scepticism.
Well, he surely has come up with a novel way to fill his “China threat” quotas now. Any time he is not welcome like a VIP on his travels, he can just shout, “China!”
Most Western politicians such as Loughton at least need an occasion and an excuse to recite the ever present “China threat”. Not Nato’s outgoing Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who can go on an anti-China rant at the drop of a hat. That is becoming the must-have qualification to be a Nato chief.
Last week, he accused Beijing of being two-faced for supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine while trying to improve relations with the West. That won’t do, he said, China must choose.
He must have forgotten his recent criticism, according to which China wanted to overturn the global security system, especially in Asia, hence Nato’s need to expand into the region. Presumably, that is so with or without Russia’s friendship.
“China says it wants good relations with the West,” Stoltenberg said. “At the same time, Beijing continues to fuel the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. They cannot have it both ways.”
Funny that! Outside the Western echo chamber, the rest of the world think it’s the US and Nato countries that have been fuelling “the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II”.
There is that US$95 billion foreign and military aid package just passed in the US, of which US$61 billion will go to arming Ukraine, not counting the many billions of dollars already sent, with vast amounts having already disappeared into the country’s notoriously corrupt government black hole.
But China is fuelling the war in Ukraine! Well, I guess China is building and developing Xinjiang in an all-out genocide too, so unlike what Israel and the US are doing in the Palestinian territories.
