Category: China

The Galwan Valley incident this past week between China and India reminds a lot of what happened during the 1976 DMZ Axe Murder Incident. Instead of axes the Chinese used these improvised weapons to murder the Indian troops that were conducting duties in an area of the valley the Chinese claim was there’s.

An image has emerged showing a crude weapon purportedly used by Chinese forces in the fatal brawl along China’s disputed border with India on Monday.

The fight in the Galwan Valley left at least 20 Indian soldiers dead and raised tensions between the two powers.

China did not acknowledge any casualties among its forces. Both sides accused the other of an incursion.

The border between the two nations in the region is poorly demarcated and can shift with topographical changes.

The image that emerged on Thursday showed crude weapons that appeared to be made from iron rods studded with nails. It was passed to the BBC by a senior Indian military official on the India-China border, who said the weapons had been used by the Chinese.

Defence analyst Ajai Shukla, who first tweeted the image, described the use of such weapons as “barbarism”. The absence of firearms in the clash dates back to a 1996 agreement between the two sides that guns and explosives be prohibited along the disputed stretch of the border, to deter escalation.

The image was widely shared on Twitter in India, prompting outrage from many social media users. Neither Chinese or Indian officials commented on it.

Media reports said troops clashed on ridges at a height of nearly 4,267m (14,000 ft) along a steep terrain, with some soldiers falling into the fast-flowing Galwan river in sub-zero temperatures.

BBC News

You can read more at the link, but with the DMZ Axe Murder Incident, U.S. troops were trimming a tree on the North Korean side of the JSA which prompted what many believe was a planned attack by the North Koreans. I would not be surprised if this attack has long been planned by the Chinese as well considering the use of these improvised weapons. With all the coronavirus and economic issues in China, what better way to divert domestic attention by stoking nationalism by killing a few Indian troops?

Currently it doesn’t appear that the Indians are about to mount a strong response like the U.S. did after the DMZ Axe Murder Incident. If they don’t this will only embolden the Chinese to further take action either against India again or in a place like the South China Sea against other nations they have border disputes with.

I have always said that the Kim regime is not going to feel the real effect of sanctions until the Chinese banks are sanctioned. Hopefully this is a sign of the U.S. government more aggressively going after Chinese banks:

The U.S. government has charged 28 North Korean and five Chinese individuals with facilitating more than $2.5 billion in illegal payments for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile program as part of a clandestine global network operating from countries including China, Russia, Libya and Thailand.

In a 50-page federal indictment unsealed Thursday in Washington, D.C., the Justice Department accused the individuals of acting as agents of North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, in what officials say is the largest North Korean sanctions violations case charged by the U.S.

Working for the FTB — which is North Korea’s primary foreign currency bank and under sanctions for facilitating nuclear proliferation — the agents allegedly set up more than 250 front companies and covert bank branches around the world to mask payments transiting the U.S. financial system, including through several Chinese banks and for equipment from Chinese telecommunications giants Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp., according to charging documents. (…….)

The massive enforcement action comes as United Nations experts have detailed North Korea’s widespread evasion of sanctions by using agents of state-owned and other banks overseas to facilitate a global web of illicit oil, arms and coal deals to bring in foreign currency. The efforts have been augmented through offshore, ship-to-ship transfers, large-scalecryptocurrency hacks and ransomware attacks.

Washington Post

A ROK Drop favorite Joshua Stanton from One Free Korea is quoted in the article:

“This adds to the already overwhelming evidence that China’s government is willfully assisting Kim Jong Un in his violations of North Korea sanctions,” said Joshua Stanton, a lawyer who helped write the 2016 law that strengthened North Korea sanctions.

“I’ll believe it’s ‘maximum pressure’ when those banks begin to face nine- and ten-digit penalties, like the ones President (Barack) Obama imposed on European banks that broke Iran sanctions,” Stanton said, and has advised House and Senate staffers on North Korea sanctions law.

According to the article no one is in custody because assuredly the North Koreans and Chinese won’t hand these people over. However, already $63 million in assets have been seized.

Maybe the politics of the coronavirus is finally causing our government to take real action against Chinese banks?

Here is some apparent blowback on the WHO which could effect South Korea:

A group of senior U.S Congress members has asked Korea, among 55 countries, to support Taiwan joining the World Health Organization (WHO) despite China’s opposition. 

Analysts said Friday this may test Korea again in its attempts to strike a balance between the U.S. and China, following the heightened Washington-Beijing standoff over the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I would be surprised if the Moon administration supports this. I would think they would try to filibuster the idea and wait for it to go away without having to make a decision on it.

Here is a long, but interesting read from Australia’s Daily Telegraph about a leaked document supposedly prepared by western governments about the possibility of the coronavirus being unintentionally released from the Wuhan lab:

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.

The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.

It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.

Daily Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but even though there is no direct evidence yet that it was unintentionally released from the lab, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way laid out in the article. Unfortunately it appears that circumstantial evidence is only relevant depending on ones politics.

This seems to be a growing belief that this virus was accidentally spilled from the lab in Wuhan:

There is increasing confidence that the COVID-19 outbreak likely originated in a Wuhan laboratory, though not as a bioweapon but as part of China’s attempt to demonstrate that its efforts to identify and combat viruses are equal to or greater than the capabilities of the United States, multiple sources who have been briefed on the details of early actions by China’s government and seen relevant materials tell Fox News.

This may be the “costliest government cover-up of all time,” one of the sources said.

The sources believe the initial transmission of the virus – a naturally occurring strain that was being studied there – was bat-to-human and that “patient zero” worked at the laboratory, then went into the population in Wuhan.

The “increasing confidence” comes from classified and open-source documents and evidence, the sources said. Fox News has requested to see the evidence directly. Sources emphasized — as is often the case with intelligence — that it’s not definitive and should not be characterized as such. Some inside the administration and the intelligence and epidemiological communities are more skeptical, and the investigation is continuing.

Fox News

You can read more at the link.