Why is the United States bound to defend a nation that won’t defend itself? America, dump Taiwan now!
From the article:
“I’m worried that the decline in military expenditures may send a wrong signal to the United States and Japan that Taiwan is short of determination to defend itself against China,” said Tsai Huang-lang of the pro-independence [...]

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A New Cold war in the Caribbean?
The significance of the Izvestia bluster isn’t that the Russians could be coming again — Moscow’s Defense Minister later said any air force arrangement in Cuba would most likely involve stops for fuel rather than actual bases — but that they’ve returned to the idea of using the Caribbean [...]

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China and Russia are challenging the US for dominance in Latin America by pursuing trade and military deals
During a visit to Beijing in November, Correa said China could turn the Manta base into a transit port from which to exploit the riches of the Amazon. China, which is engaged in a headlong rush for timber, [...]

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The cases have intensified the evaluation in intelligence and law enforcement circles about the breadth of the threat from Beijing. Many have been similar to the one involving Mr. Bergersen, in that prosecutors describe them as carefully planned intelligence operations run by the Chinese government intended to steal national security secrets. Other cases, however, are [...]

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It may be a sporting event but Beijing is on war footing with an estimated 100,000 soldiers, police and anti-terrorist commandos mobilized to guarantee the safety of next month’s Summer Olympics. The People’s Liberation Army has also deployed a battery of surface-to-air Hongqi missiles to guard against attacks from the sky. Despite the preparations, however, [...]

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What the Games Mean for Beijing’s Future.
Failure to plan for predictable problems has turned China’s coming-out party into an embarrassment.
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Yet even as Beijing has worked tirelessly to ensure the most impressive of Olympic spectacles, it is clear that the Games have come to highlight not only the awesome achievements of the country but also the [...]

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Beijing has promoted its 2008 Games as a nature-friendly festival of sport, but water for the expanses of greenery and sparkling waterways greeting visitors in August will be pumped from sources already battered by over-use and over-engineering, says Probe International, a Canada-based conservation group.
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A massive wave of Christianity has been sweeping across China in recent years, and the Chinese ruling party, officially atheist, is now struggling to figure out how to control it. In this joint project of Frontline/World and the Chicago Tribune, reporter Evan Osnos investigates how this movement could potentially transform China at an explosive moment [...]

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If China were to follow the U.S. in individual demand on natural resources, it would need the available capacity of the entire planet, the report issued by WWF in Beijing said.
China uses 15 percent of the world’s total biological capacity—resources such as water, land and timber, the report said.
“In the next 10 to 20 years, [...]

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Beijing and Washington are geopolitical rivals and Beijing has used the gains from trade and investment to strengthen its capabilities. It has been foolish to allow China to amass its dollar hoard through an inattentive trade policy. It would be even more irresponsible to allow Beijing to use its money any way it pleases to [...]

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In fact, some analysts argue that fresh protests could break out as early as this weekend, when the Olympic torch relay passes through the Tibetan capital Lhasa, a route some protesters have claimed was a deliberate provocation. In an apparent concession, Beijing shortened the time that the torch would be present in Tibet but refused [...]

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Given China’s incredibly dark earthquake history, there is absolutely no excuse for the government to allow any of this. In fact, in 1976, China suffered an earthquake that resulted in the highest number of quake-related casualties in the last four centuries. This earthquake occurred in the Tangshen area of China and damage reached as far [...]

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With energy demand spiking, China looks for answers in Africa. But Western investment and influence still dominate the continent’s oil market.
As global demand for energy continues to rise, major players like the United States, European Union (EU), and Japan are facing a new competitor in the race to secure long-term energy supplies: China. As its [...]

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The Russian-Chinese bilateral commission on military technical cooperation has not met for two years, and Russia’s defense minister has repeatedly postponed his visit to Beijing. Military experts say that Russian companies are not working on a single major contract for China, supplying only spare parts and components, including for the assembly of Mi-8 Hip and [...]

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Like Su, China is already trying to look ahead after the magnitude-7.9 earthquake. Reconstruction has started, even as the communist government attempts to feed and shelter about 5 million people left homeless by the massive disaster.
Shopkeepers who lost years of investment are plotting how to get their businesses running again. The government’s open response may [...]

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So far so good, but it still takes two to tango and the EU is not making the right moves, Bingran Dai of the Centre for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai tells ISN Security Watch.
“The problem is that the atmosphere has changed drastically since 2006 and the Chinese public and the government feel [...]

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A Chinese woman pleaded guilty in a US court Wednesday to helping to spy for Beijing in a Pentagon-linked espionage case, the Justice Department said.
Yu Xin Kang, 33, admitted to “aiding and abetting” a Taiwanese-American, Tai Shen Kuo, who had earlier pleaded guilty to spying for China involving sensitive military secrets.
Businessman Kuo had obtained secret [...]

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It’s hard to take Medvedev/Putin’s complaints seriously about the American missile defense system in Europe while they help arm a China that might turn on them at any time.
Of course, I can’t help but bring up the fact that Russia has helped Iran create the missile problem in the first place. Russia has long been [...]

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The spread of long-range ballistic missiles took a step forward on May 7 with India’s successful flight test of its Agni-III missile that can carry a nuclear warhead as far as Beijing.
But the difference between this and other missile developments is that India’s missiles — like those of the United States, Britain, France and Israel [...]

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The latest figures released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute show a precipitous decline in the volume of Russian weapons sales to the Chinese military. Although Beijing remains the single largest recipient of Russian arms, the figures show a 63 percent decrease in the value of major Russian weapons deliveries to China, which is [...]

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A powerful earthquake struck Monday close to densely populated areas of southwestern China, flattening schools and homes and killing more than 100 people, according to early estimates.
The quake, with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale, was felt in cities across a swathe of southeast Asia including the Thai capital Bangkok, more than 1,800 [...]

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