Bloomberg reported on October 29, 2017 that PetroChina Co. had just suffered the biggest stock slump in world history – yet analysts are not yet convinced that it has finally hit bottom. The state-owned energy producer has lost so much money, it’s now considered the world’s biggest-ever wipeout of shareholder wealth. And it may only get worse. If the average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg proves right, PetroChina’s Shanghai shares will sink 16 percent to an all-time low in the next 12 months. If you’ve followed us for any period, you may recall that we reported on July 8, 2015 that China at that time had just had a shocking drop to its stock market of $3.2 TRILLION… in just 3 weeks.
For years, the economic policies of the People’s Republic of China have caused shock waves throughout Europe and North America, as the Chinese significantly undervalued their currency to give themselves an unfair trading advantage, according to the United States and the International Monetary Fund. Now, it seems that karma has finally bit China in its assets.
You will likely remember that Greece in 2012 almost swamped the entire European Union with its debts of €323 billion. Now take a deep breath and contemplate this – the Shanghai stock exchange lost that much value on July 8, 2015 alone. In fact, by the time the financial bleeding had stopped, as we reported in the article above, the Shanghai index had lost 13 times more value than that entire debt of Greece. In fact, it lost the basic total value of the entire Japanese economy.
Stay tuned. folks – China’s volatility on the world stage could cause a massive domino effect worldwide. No nation is an island, especially one that is 18% of the entire world’s economy. And, as the Economist wrote in March 2015:
“BY MAKING things and selling them to foreigners, China has transformed itself—and the world economy with it. In 1990 it produced less than 3% of global manufacturing output by value; its share now (in 2015) is nearly a quarter. China produces about 80% of the world’s air-conditioners, 70% of its mobile phones and 60% of its shoes. The white heat of China’s ascent has forged supply chains that reach deep into South-East Asia. This “Factory Asia” now makes almost half the world’s goods.”
Like it or not, China’s rise or fall financially will do the same to the rest of the world. Let’s just pray they can crawl out of this latest hole they have dug themselves, before this does happen to the rest of us.
UPDATE: North Korea is threatening the United States with a nuclear assault on the island territory of Guam, as it continues to bluster with President Trump and flex its newly developed missile muscles. President Trump has threatened that any military action on any of the U.S. territories or allies will be met with “fire and fury unlike anything has ever been seen before”. Stay tuned.
Check out our videos on this subject:
ORIGINAL POST: March 4, 2016The BBC reported on March 2, 2016, that the United Nations Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution significantly expanding international sanctions against North Korea. Correspondents say the new measures amount to some of the toughest against North Korea in two decades. The vote is in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last month.
We thought it would be interesting for our readers to learn a few of the more interesting things about North Korea, that we doubt CNN is going to tell you.
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(Credit: Vice)Marijuana is completely legal in North Korea. That actually explains a lot. In fact, it’s not even considered a drug in the secretive dictatorship. The Huffington Post reported that defectors, visitors and experts have all testified that North Korea either has no law against the sale and consumption of weed, or it has a law that is largely unenforced. NK NEWS receives regular reports from visitors returning from North Korea, who tell of marijuana plants growing freely along the roadsides, from the northern port town of Chongjin, right down to the streets of Pyongyang, where it is smoked freely.
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Night Lights of capital city Pyongyang, North Korea. (Credit: Robert Harding World Imagery)Pyongyang, the capital city, has only 100,000 visitors per year, and most of them come from neighbouring China. However, tourism is now sanctioned by leader Kim Jong-un, and they have grand targets to reach out to 1 million people by 2017 and 2 million by 2020. Seems ambitious for a country that treats most travellers like possible terrorists. And the world’s #1 most visited city? Bangkok, Thailand, with 15.98 million visitors, according to the annual listing by Forbes magazine.
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James Dresnok, America’s last defector. (Credit: BBC Four)Six American soldiers defected to North Korea in 1962 and have lived there ever since. “I was fed up with my childhood, my marriage, my military life, everything. I was a goner. There’s only one place to go,” said James Dresnok, the last US defector alive in North Korea, who recently spoke to the Guardian newspaper. In August 1962, he stepped into the minefield and crossed over to North Korea.
Eventually, there were four of them: Abshier, Jerry Parrish, Charles Robert Jenkins, and Dresnok. The men lived together and participated in several propaganda efforts on behalf of the North Korean government. They appeared on magazine covers and used loudspeakers to try to persuade more American soldiers at the border to defect. However, at first, they did not wish to remain in North Korea indefinitely. In 1966, the four men tried to leave North Korea by seeking asylum at the Soviet embassy in Pyongyang but were immediately turned over to North Korean authorities by the embassy. Afterwards, Dresnok decided to settle in North Korea and assimilate. He married a couple of times and is currently in failing health.
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(Credit: Original oil painting by artist Richard DeRosset for USS PUEBLO crew member Tom Massie)North Korea is the world’s only nation to currently have a captured U.S. Navy ship. On January 23, 1968, in international waters more than 15 miles from North Korea, the USS Pueblo, an electronic intelligence ship, was surrounded by sub chasers and torpedo boats, with MiG jets overhead. The sailors on the Pueblo were rounded up and put in prison camps. While the North produced propaganda footage showing fair treatment, the reality was much worse. The crew endured starvation and torture for nearly a year. Eventually, the North Korean government decided to release all crew members. The Pueblo is still held by North Korea and remains the second-oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy.
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(Credit: Official Website of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea)North Korea is officially NOT Communist anymore. In 2009, references to Communism were removed from the country’s constitution, and “Juche” became the official state ideology, replacing Marxism–Leninism when the country adopted a new constitution in 1972. Created by Kim Il-sung, it states that the Korean masses are the masters of the country’s development, with an emphasis on political, economic and defensive self-sustainability.
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2016 North Korea Wall Calendar – “Dispatcher readies a Pyongyang train to depart” (Credit: NK News)It’s not 2016 in North Korea. The year is 105! The Juche Calendar was introduced in 1997 and is based on Kim Il Sung’s date of birth: April 15, 1912. That year was referred as Juche 1 and the system works forward from there, while it maintains the Gregorian Calendar’s traditional months and the number of days in a month.
In many instances of non-Korean usage, the Juche year is given after the corresponding Gregorian year, i.e. 12 June 2007 (Juche 96). However, most official DPR-Korean sources list the Gregorian year second, as in 12 June Juche 96 (2007).
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(Credit: BusinessInsider.com)North Korea has the World’s Largest Stadium, seating 150,000 people. The leaders of the country aim to prove North Korea’s might through its architecture, most of which is made of bulky concrete. That includes the May Day Stadium, a colossal structure built in 1989 and remodelled in 2014 that seats 150,000 people. It is the largest stadium by capacity in the world. While it hosts some soccer matches and general athletic competitions, May Day’s grandest and most elaborate events are the annual Mass Games (known in Korean as Arirang). They pay tribute to the country’s history, founders, and current leaders through gymnastics and dance performances put on by thousands of participants. On June 13, 2004, the Telegraph reported that, at the end of the 1990s, a plan hatched by a number of Korean army generals was uncovered, and the conspirators arrested, to assassinate Kim Il-Sung. After they were interrogated, the generals were executed in the May Day Stadium. Petrol was poured over them and set alight, burning them alive.
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(Credit: IO9.com)In 2012, North Korean archaeologists announced to the world that they “discovered” the resting place of a UNICORN. The Telegraph reported in November 2012, North Korean archaeologists claimed to discover a mythical unicorn lair belonging to King Tongmyong, founder of the ancient Korean kingdom. The announcement was made by the History Institute of the DPRK Academy of Social Sciences, which reported that the lair was found 220 yards from a temple in Pyongyang. “A rectangular rock carved with words ‘Unicorn Lair’ stands in front of the lair. The carved words are believed to date back to the period of Koryo Kingdom (918-1392),” the report said. “The temple served as a relief palace for King Tongmyong, in which there is the lair of his unicorn.”
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The tallest flagpole in the world in the North Korean town of Kijong-Dong. (Credit: Korrespondent.net)North Korea built a ghost city on the border with South Korea, to encourage defection. As reported in a 2014 New York Postarticle, according to the Korean government, the village of Kijongdong, located in the North’s half of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare centre, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital. However, observation from the South suggests that it’s actually a ghost town, created to encourage South Korean defection. Until 2004, massive loudspeakers mounted on several of the buildings continuously delivered DPRK propaganda broadcasts relating the North’s virtues in great detail and urging disgruntled soldiers and farmers to simply walk across the border to be received as brothers. Eventually, as its value in inducing defections proved minimal, the content was switched to condemnatory anti-Western speeches, Communist agitprop operas, and patriotic marching music for up to 20 hours a day.
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Ryugyong Hotel (Credit: Commons.Wikimedia.org)For 20 years, the world’s tallest hotel was a 105-story empty pyramid in Pyongyang. With 105 floors, the Ryugyong Hotel was designed to be the world’s tallest hotel at the end of the 80s, but the construction was halted in 1992 as the country entered a period of economic crisis after the fall of the Soviet Union. Japanese newspapers estimated the cost of the hotel at $750 million, which is 2% of North Korea’s GDP. For over a decade, the unfinished building sat vacant, and without windows, fixtures, or fittings, appearing as a massive concrete shell. In the late 1990s, the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Korea inspected the building and concluded that the structure was “irreparable.”
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Pyongyang Department Store No. 1 (Credit: Asktran.com The largest department store in all of North Korea, the awkwardly-named Pyongyang Department Store No. 1, offers a wide variety of items including foodstuffs, electronics, clothing, and furniture. As of 2013, approximately 70% of the items in the store were produced domestically. The store is one of several official tourist stops in the city. Just one small problem though – in a documentary which aired on PBS’ Frontline, Secret State of North Korea, it was reported that the film crew had attended the store, and learned very quickly that NOTHING in it was actually for sale. It was an elaborate smokescreen to billboard the country’s economic strength – but it actually has generally done the exact opposite.
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The massive escalator taking Moscow residents 100 metres deep into the Metro. (Credit: TotalRehash.com)The Metro is seriously deep. In fact, Pyongyang’s metro network is reportedly the world’s deepest. Started in 1966 as a way to connect top secret military buildings, and built by North Korea concentration camp prisoners, the Pyongyang Metro is 100 meters underground and it takes a couple of minutes to ride the escalator down to the station. The journey is long enough that some commuters sit on the steps — despite the signs asking passengers not to. The underground network has two official lines and 17 stations. However, there are rumours of several other secret stations used by government and military only. Inspired by the grand Moscow Metro, many of the stations have ornate chandeliers and paintings and murals on the walls.
By Unbreakable China,
Founding Blog Member Calling Out Community Posted March 4, 2016. Updated August 14, 2017
Tuidang.org, the official website of the “Quitting Chinese Communist Party” movement, reported last Sunday, September 25, 2016 that the State Council of the People’s Republic of China has drafted a new set of religious restrictions, to be officially enacted in early October. The restrictions aim to suppress all unofficial religious activities, including breaking up Christian house churches, silencing Tibetan and Xinjiang separatists and undermining the Vatican’s influence on Chinese Catholics.
Crosses being removed from Churches in China earlier in 2016. (Credit: BBC)
If one looks at Liberal mainline denominations within the Christian Church in North America today, they could be forgiven for thinking that the Church around the world is weak, compromising, and has lost influence on society.
Yet across the globe, the explosive growth of the Church is astonishing – in fact, according to the Pew Research Center survey in 2011, there were 2.18 billion Christians around the world in 2010, nearly four times as many as were recorded 100 years ago. In 2015, Pew Research also estimated that in the next 35 years (by 2050), the Christian population is expected to be 2.9 billion, a stunning growth of more than 700 million people. Most of this growth can be seen in Protestant churches, which grew three times faster than the world’s population, and twice as fast as Islam.
There are two countries specifically where Church growth is so tremendous, they represent the highest concentration of Christian believers in world history – in India and China.
Christmas Eve 2012 at an unnamed Chinese church. (Credit: tothesource.org)
On March 26, 2016, as Easter celebrations were beginning across the globe, the BBC reported that for the first time since the Communist revolution in China in 1949, there are now more Christians in China than Communist Party members.
While they estimate that there are more than 100 million Christians in China, Charisma magazine states the number as high as 140 million people, with another 70 million in India. Those national congregations are now growing so quickly, it is believed that those two countries alone will have 330 million Christians in the next 30 years. Friends, that’s the entire population of the United States, including children.
We rejoice in this miraculous revival taking place around the world. But dark clouds now are gathering in China, and the Church there may soon face some of it’s darkest days. Some strong indicators:
The New York Times reported on February 26 that at the beginning of the year, the government ordered the removal of crosses from Churches, taking away over 1,200 to date. One pastor tried to block the removal of the Cross from his church, and he was arrested, tried, convicted and is serving 14 years in prison.
In 1981, the government mandated that the Nanjing Union Theological Seminary be the only seminary in the entire nation that is allowed to train future pastors – after they first closed 11 other seminaries and merged them together. As of 2012, the Seminary had only 280 students and annually graduates 70, which is about 1 for every 2 million of China’s Christians. America has approximately 1 million ministers – 1 for every 330 people.
What it failed to destroy, the Communist Party still wants to control. So, an officially atheist government effectively runs its own churches and controls the appointment of its own priests.
Joseph Gu, arrested for his faith.
At the end of January 2016, the pastor of China’s largest Protestant church, “Joseph” Gu was arrested after he publicly protested the government’s campaign to remove crosses from churches. During this same time, his wife and several other family members went missing, yet to be heard from again.
China’s greatest megachurch, with more than 10,000 attendees on a Sunday, is today without a pastor (courtesy: Chongyi Church)
Gu pastors a 10,000-member church that is part of the government’s officially sanctioned “Three-Self Patriotic Movement” (TSPM). Though the government claimed he was detained for “suspicions of economic issues, including embezzling money,” human rights advocates say Gu’s detention is part of a larger movement by China’s communist government to persecute Christian leaders who they perceive as a threat to the government’s power. Pastor Gu He will be the highest-ranking national church leader arrested since the Cultural Revolution.
Wang Zuoan speaks at the tenth forum on religious work. (Credit: State Administration for Religious Affairs)
Now, in this announcement today, authorities released the Revised Draft of Regulations on Religious Affairs (To Be Approved) to the public to gather opinion. The draft will stop accepting suggestions on Oct. 7, at which point the Council will formally bring the document into effect. Currently the draft, based on the previous Regulations on Religious Affairs, contains nine chapters and 74 articles. Some of the proposed articles include prohibitions on “organizing citizens to attend religious trainings, conferences and activities abroad,” “preaching, organizing religious activities, and establishing religious institutions or religious sites at schools,” and “providing religious services through the internet.”
Incidences of persecution of Chinese Christians have recently skytrocketed. (Credit: China Aid)
Revisions to the Regulations on Religious Affairs occur approximately every ten years, with new revisions appearing in both 1995 and 2006.
“Studying the newly revised Regulations on Religious Affairs, it is evident that the Party wants to take charge of religion,” a pastor named Zhou said. “The government wants to control everything, even the smallest aspects. One characteristic of this draft is the empowerment of local government bodies all the way down to the communities. This revision will further reduce the possibility of loosening religious control in China. It is becoming impossible.”
Gao Baosheng, American pastor, has been an outspoken critic of China’s persecution of Christians. (Credit: China Aid)
Gao Baosheng, the pastor of a U.S.-based Chinese church, wrote an article on the new revisions, titled, “The Alarming Changes in the Revised Draft of Regulations on Religious Freedom,” in which he stated: “We can see that the government is clenching tighter and tighter on Christianity, Catholicism, Buddhism and Islam. The laws are becoming more and more specific and detailed when suppressing Christian family churches [Editor’s note: “Family church” is another way of translating the word “house church.”], Catholicism, and all other underground religions. The revisions provide a powerful legal base for future suppression. The conditions of religious freedom in China are worsened for them. This draft will bring upon a religious winter so harsh that we must seek guidance from God.”
Gao also said he believes the government “seeking public opinion” is nothing more than formality
“Overall,” Gao said, “the Revised Draft of Regulations on Religious Affairs is [Chinese President] Xi Jinping’s attempt to further manage and suppress religions by taking advantage of the laws. By observing these changes in the Draft, we can tell that the government is imposing more control on major religions.”
May God protect the Church in China.
By Unbreakable China, Founding Blog Member Calling Out Community Posted September 26, 2016
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UPDATE (April 26, 2017): China has officially launched its second aircraft carrier – the first homegrown carrier the People’s Liberation Army-Navy has ever built. This carrier was not even officially announced by Beijing until January 2016, even though we first reported it here on November 2014! Full posting is shown below.
A launching ceremony is held for China’s first domestically developed aircraft carrier at Dalian Port on April 26, 2017 in Dalian, Liaoning Province of China. (Credit: VCG/VCG via Getty Images)
UPDATE (January 26, 2017):
On April 26, as was reported above, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) launched its first domestically constructed aircraft carrier from a shipyard in Dailan. The as-yet-unnamed carrier still requires much more additional work before it joins PLAN’s fleet. But the ship’s construction began less than five years ago (in November of 2012), and it only moved into full dry-dock construction in 2015. And China appears poised to churn out additional new aircraft carriers even faster, based upon the experience acquired in this first homegrown carrier project.
In March, Zhu Chenghu, a professor at China’s National Defense University, told China Daily:
“China launching its first domestically designed aircraft carrier is a monumental step toward building a world-class navy. The valuable lessons learned from building a carrier from scratch will help China build more carriers faster in the future and enable them to reach combat readiness quicker.”
For the sake of comparison, the US Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, began construction in 2009 and launched in 2013; it is still undergoing outfitting, and no commissioning date has yet been set. While the Ford is certainly a more complicated and much larger vessel than the new Chinese carrier, the US has been building aircraft carriers since World War II. China’s only previous experience with aircraft carriers comes from work on the PLAN’s first carrier, the CNS Liaoning—the rebuilt former Soviet ship that China purchased from Ukraine in the mid-1990s. It took nearly 16 years to complete the Liaoning, which was purchased under somewhat shady circumstances.
The rusty-looking Varyag aircraft carrier sold by the Ukraine to China passes through the Bosphorus near Istanbul in 2001. China initially claimed it was to become a floating casino. (Credit: Kerim Okten/EPA)
UPDATE (January 12, 2016):
China has at last formally acknowledged that it has a new aircraft carrier under construction, the first to be built in China and the second in the People’s Liberation Army-Navy’s order of battle. Unbelievable, considering we first reported it back in November 2014! (See the full original post below)
However, according to South China Morning Post, what is news is that the Chinese will be using a Russian blueprint to finish the current carrier. The new warship will be lighter than the Liaoning but have more space for fighter jets, according to Ifeng.com, an online news arm of Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.
J-15 fighter jet pilots and crew were training on the Liaoning slightly and be able to transition seamlessly to the new carrier, the report said.
As we reported in November 2014, the PLA Navy appears to have embarked on a substantial carrier program, probably with the intention of creating four and perhaps up to six carrier battle groups. Chinese commentators have publicly acknowledged the need for at least three units in order to have an effective carrier capability. The rehabilitated ex-Russian carrier Liaoning, designated Carrier 16, has been the start of this effort, although its reliability has yet to be confirmed.
China’s aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at its commissioning in 2012.
(ORIGINAL POST – November 22, 2014)
Since the 1970s, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) has expressed interest in operating an aircraft carrier as part of its blue (international) waters aspirations. According to a 2009 report in Chinadaily.com, from an anonymous Japanese government official, then-Chinese Defence Minister Liang Guanglie told his Japanese counterpart Yasukazu Hamada, while the two met in Japan in September 2009, that China was the only major nation in the world with no carriers. “China has a formidable task of protecting its vast sea territory,” Liang was quoted as saying. According to the report, he then went on to then state that China will build an aircraft carrier in the future.
Of course, China already owned an aircraft carrier at that time. The Russian aircraft carrier Varyag was incomplete when sold to China by the Ukraine in 2000, apparently lacking engines and a lot of other necessary equipment. At that time, China announced it would be retrofitting the ship to become a floating casino in Macau!
The ship arrived in China in 2003, following a two-year delay: Turkey balked at its transit of the Turkish Straits and the Dardanelles, an apparent violation of the Montreux Convention. Then followed a hazardous voyage to China under tow. At one point the ship broke free from its tugs in the Eastern Mediterranean and was almost abandoned. It spent nearly a decade being reconstructed in Chinese shipyards. Most experts believed that China would NEVER get its act together and have a working aircraft carrier.
Until, that is, the BBC reported on June 8, 2011 that the People’s Liberation Army Chief of the General Staff Chen Bingde had confirmed China was already constructing at least one locally-designed aircraft carrier, in the same shipyards where the original Liaoning had been redeveloped. The West certainly wasn’t going to give China the know-how to have their own aircraft carrier fleet, but apparently they had learned enough from the decade spent retrofitting and rebuilding the Russian carrier.
Photo of China’s top-secret aircraft carrier base. (Credit: mil.huanqiu.com)
Which, incidentally, was finally commissioned on September 25, 2012. In the most publicized PLA Navy modernization event ever, after a year of extensive sea trials, the aircraft carrier, formerly known as the Varyag, finally entered operational service as the Liaoning (named after the province where the ship was refitted and refurbished). It was announced that it would be used primarily as a training platform “with no assigned aircraft”. Official statements said that the vessel would also help China defend its interests (emphasis mine) – apparently forever erasing the “floating casino” idea. Not even two months later, they had already conducted launching and landing jet fighters on its deck.
Hinting that two carriers just weren’t going to be enough, Chinese military expert Du Wenlong told the Chinese state media arm, the People’s Daily: “If China had only one aircraft carrier, it would not conform to China’s status as a world power, nor to the demands imposed by the length of the coastline. Considering China’s ocean environment, two aircraft carriers are not enough to safeguard marine interests. If China has three aircraft carriers, they can maintain a sustained combat capability: maintenance, safeguarding and patrol respectively,”
So it as quite a shock when, on June 13, 2013, the China Daily Mail reported that China will build six aircraft carriers by 2020. Elite Reference magazine is also quoted as saying, “There has been analysis that China will carry out its plan for aircraft carrier construction by stages. At the first stage, four conventional carriers will be built; while at the second stage, at least two nuclear carriers will be built. They are expected to be delivered to Chinese navy around 2020.”
And they are moving full steam ahead with that goal. On January 20, 2014, in a Global Times report sourcing Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao newspaper, Wang Min, the Party chief of Northeast China’s Liaoning Province, told a panel at the annual session of the provincial legislature that a second Chinese carrier is being built at a shipyard in the port city of Dalian. According to the official, construction is expected to be completed in six years, and China will eventually have at least four aircraft carriers. Wang also said the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) needs a total of four carriers by 2020.
An October 22 report in the South China Morning Post, quoting Kanwa Asian Defence, an English-language monthly defense review produced in Toronto, it was announced that Shanghai’s Jiangnan Shipyard was preparing to start work on the second locally designed aircraft carrier.
China’s 2nd aircraft carrier, under construction. Experts say it should be completed by 2015. (Credit: Reuters, Google)
FULL STOP. 4 CARRIERS… in 6 YEARS? And “needs them by 2020”? With the possibility of 2 further NUCLEAR carriers soon thereafter? What on earth is this sudden necessity dictated by – Japanese, Australian or US aggression in the Pacific? What rubbish. At a full complement of even 5 carriers (not to mention the proposed 7), the Chinese would tip the balance of power in the Pacific and would be the largest naval presence in that region. According to DefenseTech, “the PLA Navy would then present quite a power in the global seas. As pointed out by the U.S. Naval Institute, a four carrier navy would allow the Chinese to keep one carrier on patrol at all time.”
Our Western governments and media have failed us, so we’re Calling Out China: Why do you suddenly need 4 carriers in 6 years, when you didn’t have 1 working carrier 2 years ago? What is your real end game? Why are you on a 2020 timeline?
Stay tuned folks, we’re going to keep watch over this one..
By Unbreakable China, Founding Blog Member Calling Out Community Posted July 1, 2016 Updated April 28, 2017
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On Saturday, April 2, US Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump told a crowd of thousands in Rothschild, Wisconsin that he was optimistic about potential hostilities between North Korea and its neighbors. He said that if conflict between Japan and nuclear-armed North Korea were to break out, “it would be a terrible thing but if they do, they do”.
“Good luck,” he added. “Enjoy yourself, folks.”
Donald Trump in Wisconsin on Saturday (Credit: Scott Olson, Houston Chronicle)
Referring to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, Trump also complained that the US had 28,000 troops on the armistice line between North Korea and South Korea “to stop a maniac”, adding that the United States received no benefit from deploying troops around the world to help other countries who did not reimburse American taxpayers. “We can’t be the policeman of the world,” said Trump.
U.S. Marines participate in a U.S.-South Korea joint landing operation drill (Credit: Reuters)
“What we do get out of it?” he asked. “It’s time that other people stopped looking at us as stupid, stupid people.”
He pledged, if elected, “we are going to get these countries to pay and to pay all the money they owe us for many years … we’ve been carrying these countries”, he said.
US troops are deployed in South Korea to support the United Nations, which enforces an armistice ending the Korean War in 1953.
The two countries are still technically at war, and North Korea often engages in a belligerent activity, which recently has included sinking a South Korean ship and bombarding South Korean territory. Both events could have led to war, had other countries like the US, Japan and China not stepped in to calm the situation down.
North Korea threatens war with U.S. in propaganda film (Credit: CNN)
This week, as President Obama chaired a multi-nation nuclear security summit in Washington, Pyongyang carried out the latest of a number of ballistic missile tests. Last week, North Korea released a propaganda film that showed the US capital under nuclear attack.
According to Trump: “Frankly, the case could be made to let [Japan] protect themselves against North Korea, they’d probably wipe them out pretty quick.
Trump previously suggested in a televised interview with CNN that South Korea and Japan should have their own nuclear weapons, in contradiction of more than half a century of American foreign policy. The Republican frontrunner said of that policy: “Maybe it’s going to have to be time to change.”
The Hyuga (bottom) and Izumo (top) class of helicopter carriers built for the Japanese navy.
Japan shocked the world recently when it added a ‘helicopter landing ship’ to their Navy – which looked exactly like an aircraft carrier. They have since added several larger versions of the same. While Japan has for decades been constitutionally prohibited from having an army, we reported in 2015 that this was no longer the case. They have built three aircraft carriers in the last several years and clearly are ramping up militarily again. China also has several aircraft carriers under construction on a massive rearmament campaign.
Not surprising to my readers, I’m sure, I agree with Trump completely on most points. Its time that the world not assume that the Western powers are going to bail them out every time some banana republic dictator threatens their neighbors.
A nuclear North Korea must not be allowed by the international community, but I certainly do not agree that the solution would be to add even more nations to the Nuclear Old Boy’s Club. A agreement is unlikely to be reached with North Korea to disarm its reported nuclear stockpiles (Clinton already tried it once and clearly failed, and Obama ruined any possibility of good deal for us with his idiotic agreement with Iran). Perhaps we would have to strike at North Korean nuclear facilities, much like Israel did with Iran years ago.
Tensions between China, Japan and the Koreas are for the most part not North America’s problem currently. A war between these four powerful nations could literally destroy the entire Pacific Rim, if not the world. Here is how they militarily stack up at present:
China
#3 most powerful armed forces Total Population: 1,367,485,388 Fit for Service: 619,000,000 Reaching Military Age Annually: 19,550,000 Active Frontline Personnel: 2,335,000 Active Reserve Personnel: 2,300,000 Tanks: 9,150 Total Aircraft: 2,942 Navy Ships: 646, including 1 aircraft carrier Submarines: 68
Japan
#7 most powerfularmed forces
Total Population: 126,919,659
Fit for Service: 44,000,000
Reaching Military Age Annually: 1,215,000
Active Frontline Personnel: 250,000
Active Reserve Personnel: 57,900
Tanks: 678
Total Aircraft: 1,590
Navy Ships: 131, including 3 aircraft carriers
Submarines: 17
South Korea
#12 most powerful armed forces Total Population: 49,115,196 Fit for Service: 21,035,000 Reaching Military Age Annually: 690,000 Active Frontline Personnel: 625,000 Active Reserve Personnel: 2,900,000 Tanks: 2,381 Total Aircraft: 1,451 Navy Ships: 166, including 1aircraft carriers Submarines: 15
North Korea
#25 most powerfularmed forces Total Population: 24,983,205 Fit for Service: 10,100,000 Reaching Military Age Annually: 415,000 Active Frontline Personnel: 700,000 Active Reserve Personnel: 4,500,000 Tanks: 4,200 Total Aircraft: 944 Navy Ships: 967, including 0 aircraft carriers Submarines: 70
I agree with Trump that its time South Korea, the Philippines, Germany and others start paying for the privilege of US troops stationed in their nations for their protection. And Mr. Trump, while you are at it, please kick the United Nations out of New York, and pull the United States out of this international joke. It accomplishes nothing militarily and costs most of us Western powers a fortune to maintain.
The threat of a massive war in Asia looms more clearly every day. Perhaps, with the possible election of Donald Trump as President later this year, the United States and its allies, including my home Canada, could avoid being dragged into the conflict, at least at the beginning. That alone should give Americans more encouragement to vote for the billionaire in November.
By Shawn J., Founding Editor Calling Out Community Posted April 2, 2016. Updated July 26, 2017.
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For decades, China’s government has tried to limit the size of Beijing, the capital, through draconian residency permits.
Now, according to a report in the New York Times, the government has embarked on an ambitious plan to make Beijing the center of a new supercity of 130 million people.
The planned megalopolis, a metropolitan area that would be about six times the size of New York City’s population, will cover an area larger than the entire state of Kansas, and is meant to revamp northern China’s economy and become a laboratory for modern urban growth.
“The supercity is the vanguard of economic reform. It reflects the senior leadership’s views on the need for integration, innovation and environmental protection.
– Liu Gang, professor at Nankai University in Tianjin
The newly-created Jingjinji, also known as Jing-Jin-Ji or simply JJJ, will encompass the following cities as a new national capital region of China:3
Beijing (2010* pop: 19,612,368) – a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People’s Republic of China – it is China’s second largest city after Shanghai (with a staggering population of 23,019,200 in 2010)
Tianjin (2010* pop: (12,938,224) – third largest city in China both in population and land area.
Baoding (2010* pop: 10,029,197)
Shijiazhuang (2010* pop: 9,547,869)
Tangshan (2010* pop: 7,577,284 – completely rebuilt after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake (7.5 on the Richter scale) flattened the entire city.
Cangzhou (2010* pop: 7,134,053
Langfang (2010* pop: 4,358,839)
Zhangjiakou (2010* pop: 4,345,491)
Chengde (2010* pop: 3,473,197)
CURRENT TOTAL: 79,016,452
Jingjinji, the Supercity
(*Note: China conducts a census only once every 10 years – the last being in 2010, called the Sixth National Population Census of the People’s Republic of China. It found the total population of Mainland China to be 1,339,724,852 persons, an increase of 73,899,804 persons from the previous census conducted in 2000.)
The Chinese central government has made it a priority to integrate all the cities in the Bohai Bay rim and foster economic development. This includes building an advanced communications network, better highways, increased education and scientific resources as well as tapping natural resources off the Bohai Rim.
A giant golden statue of Chairman Mao, China’s first Communist leader, is being built near 36 m high in Central China
Rising amongst scrubby farmland of rural Henan province in East-Central China, a 36.6 meter (120 foot)steel and concrete statue of Mao Tse-Tung (Zedong), the founding father of the People’s Republic of China, looms large over the country’s politics and society, resplendent with a gleaming coat of golden paint.
Businessmen and some rural communities chipped in nearly 3 million yuan ($459,000) to build the conspicuous tribute, completed in December 2015, according to Chinese state media.
Love him or hate him, “Chairman Mao” and the Communist Party of China (CPC) that he founded on October 1, 1949 have loomed equally large across this vast nation of 1.3 billion people. In fact, during the 120th anniversary of his birth in 2013, a solid-gold likeness was installed with pride in a memorial hall in Shaoshan – at a value of over $30 million.
Regardless of the desperate clinging of some for the old CPC heyday, the Party is dying a slow, painful death. Some may point to the death of the Chairman himself in 1976 as the primary reason, but most would point to May 2000 on a calendar – when a group of Chinese-American Falun Gong practitioners founded a small newspaper called the Epoch Times – as the beginning of the end for the Party.
From its humble foundations as a daily newspaper in Chinese, the Epoch Times grew quickly into a massive, multi-language, international media company in print and online. Headquartered in New York City, the paper is now published in 9 print languages (including English) and web versions in 21 other languages – and with a circulation of more than 1 million copies distributed weekly in newspaper boxes in 35 countries free of charge (including here in Greater Vancouver, Canada where I live and work), it is one of the most powerful voices about China in the world today.
The award-winning newspaper covers matters of general interest, though it maintains a focus on news about China and human rights issues there, drawing from a network of sources inside China, plus the expertise and contacts of Chinese expatriates living in the West. It is also considered increasingly dangerous to the CPC regime, ensuring its websites are continuously (and perhaps even feverishly) blocked within China.
Why? In November 2004, the Epoch Times published an editorial series called “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” an uncensored history of the Communist Party in China. And instantly, it struck a chord with the Chinese people around the world.
Soon after the series was published the paper began receiving tens of thousands of statements from Chinese expressing their unhappiness with the Party and their desire to withdraw from it. Sensing a wind of change blowing throughout the country, a grass-roots movement known as Tuidang sprang up (Mandarin for “Quit the Party“) in January 2005 – giving the Chinese people the opportunity for the first time in nearly 60 years to separate themselves psychically and morally from the Communist regime and express their intention… that it should end.
Today, more than 20 million volunteers assist more than 1.5 million people a monthto do just that – formally renounce (often in writing) the Communist Party in China, as well as any oaths they may have sworn in th past. As the numbers of the renouncers grew, the fear (or even the possibility) of being singled out for punishment by the government diminished greatly.
So successful has been this campaign, that on April 14, 2015, the movement celebrated the 200 millionth renunciation. 99% of those individual statements have been traced back to mainland China itself – an amazing accomplishment when one considers that no one living within China can access information about the movement online.
Chaiman Mao proclaims People’s Republic of China – Tianamen Square (1949)
For over 65 years, the nation of 1.3 billion had been burdened with political oppression, entrenched corruption, and a deteriorating natural environment. Now, they can feel a fresh breeze of change, and by the millions annually, they are embracing that change wholeheartedly.
A former officer working at Tiananmen Square in Beijing with the People’s Armed Police posted this statement on the Tuidang website in 2007:
“Back then, I didn’t see the truth and took part in the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Now I understand. I hereby renounce my Young Pioneers and Youth League membership, and declare void the oaths I once made [to those organizations.]” (emphasis mine)
China has a bright future ahead if this movement can continue unhindered. May God continue to bless this incredible thirst for change and freedom in Communist China.
People stage a rally against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial security bills in front of the National Diet in Tokyo on September 19, 2015. (Credit: AFP / Kazuhiro Nogi)
In a move that has infuriated neighbouring China, the upper house of the Japan’s parliament (the Diet) has approved legislation giving more power to the armed forces. This legislation will allow Japanese troops to fight overseas – something has been banned by the Japanese constitution for nearly 70 years, since the dissolution of the Japanese Empire at the end of World War II.
The Lower House passed 11 security-related bills on July 16 – an act, which was followed by a wave of protests. The Upper House’s final session was called late Friday night and they finished early Saturday morning with the enactment of 2 of the controversial security bills. Officially a pacifistic nation for the last 7 decades, this law brings up for many modern and older Japanese citizens reminders of their military aggression in the past.
Up to this point, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has reads:
Ground Self-Defense Forces personnel were deployed in Samawah, Iraq, from 2003 to 2006 as part of Japan’s humanitarian and reconstruction assistance.
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
In recent years, though, the line between defense and offense has blurred. In 2004, Japan sent its Ground Self-Defense Forces to Iraq — the first deployment of Japanese soldiers in an active combat zone in over 60 years. With North Korea test-launching ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan and China’s economic and military expansion, Japan has started reconsidering its regional strategy.
Ceremonial deck assembly aboard the JDS Hyūga at the 2010 Ise Bay “Marine Festa” [festival] in Japan.In 2008, photographs of Japan’s newly commissioned Hyūga-class “helicopter destroyer” raised eyebrows around the world – as it looked exactly like an aircraft carrier, though smaller. Many Americans and Japanese expressed disapproval, still highly sensitive of the carrier-led Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, which led to the American entrance into World War II.
The Hyuga (bottom) and Izumo (top) class of helicopter carriers built for the Japanese navy.
Upon completion the 13-000 ton Hyūga and Ise were the largest ships built for the Japanese navy since the Second World War, and have 4 helicopter landing pads each. Hyūga was described in a PBS documentary as the “first Japanese aircraft carrier built since WWII.” To add further controversy, both of these carriers were named after the Ise-class battleshipHyugaof the Imperial Japanese Navy, launched in 1917 and converted into an aircraft carrier in 1943.
Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s new helicopter destroyer, the Kaga, launched on August 27, 2015. (Credit: Kyodo / Reuters)
But the Japanese navy’s building program has not ended there. The first of the Izumo class helicopter carriers, the much-larger 24,000 ton, 5 helicopter-pad Izumo, was launched in August 2013 and came into service in the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) in March 2015. And just last month, Japan announced the launch of the second and file carrier of this class, the Kaga, launched at the Japan Marine United shipyard in Yokohama on Thursday, August 27, to be commissioned in March 2017, Sputnik reports.
Students of history will once again be surprised to hear the name of another World War II Japanese ship – the original Kaga infamously took part in the bombardments of the China’s eastern coast including the cities of Shanghai and Nanjing in 1937. Later, it also was a part of the naval group that attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. Eventually, the ship was sunk by the US navy in the Battle of Midway in June 1942.
In January 2015, Japan approved a $42 billion military budget, the largest in the history of Japan, and the fifth largest in the world – an increase of 2 percent on last year’s and the third consecutive rise after a decade of military spending cuts. Yet, surprisingly, the US government is supportive of this change. Thomas Schieffer, the American ambassador to Japan, encouraged the Japanese government to end its self-imposed limit of 1percent of the GDP
US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer (L) speaks to reporters as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, then a cabinet minister, looks on after their lunch meeting at the prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo, November 8, 2005 (Credit: AFP/Itsuo Inouye)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ruling block extended the session to Sept. 27 and voted down all the motions from the opposition to ensure that the legislation was passed, says that Japan needs to be up to the challenge in today’s world, taking into account a rising threat from China.Of course I don’t remember Pearl Harbor or any of the Pacific Theater events of the Second World War, having been born in 1967. However, I can understand the nervous tension that this military build up has caused – I had similar chills when I saw these “helicopter destroyers”.Japanese officials said that the primary roles of the four modern helicopter carriers are peaceful, such as humanitarian aid and disaster relief operations. However, they have also mentioned that the ships could be used in anti-submarine warfare. The ships “heighten our ability to deal with Chinese submarines that have become more difficult to detect,” a JMSDF officer told Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper in March 2015.
Kaga will carry seven Mitsubishi-built SH-60k anti-submarine patrol helicopters able to detect sophisticated Chinese submarines as well as seven Agusta Westland MCM-101 mine countermeasure helicopters, according to the US Naval Institute’s News.
Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter
I almost got comfortable with this whole idea of a helicopter ship, until I read the last line of the RT article on the Japanese navy’s recent carrier launches:
The ships also have potential to launch American-built assault transport MV-22 as well as the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II Joint Strike Fighter with their short takeoff and vertical landing capabilities.
BBC has reported that Japan plans to buy 42 of the planes, 36 of which they would like to see made in Japan. Delivery of the first is expected in 2016. I just hope, as they continue to expand their military like crazy, that this time they are actually on our side.
For years, the economic policies of the People’s Republic of China have caused shock waves throughout Europe and North America, as the Chinese significantly undervalued their currency to give themselves an unfair trading advantage, according to the United States and the International Monetary Fund.
Now, it seems, the tables have finally turned. According to the Wall Street Journal, the International Monetary Fund on May 26, 2015 stated that the Chinese no longer had a strategic advantage with their currency, having risen in value to the point that it no longer gave them buying power over Western manufacturers. This is good news for North American factory workers, but probably not so much for companies like Wal-Mart that depend on cheap Chinese crap to boost their bottom line.
In fact, powerful has the Chinese manufacturing juggernaut become, that there are now several items identified as being as “American as apple pie”, which today are only made in China, including: baseballs, Radio Flyer Red Wagon, Barbie, Converse All Stars, Levi’s Jeans, U.S. Olympic team uniforms, Monopoly, and most stinging of all…
...American flags – $3.2 million worth of American flags were imported by the U.S. in 2010, with the vast majority being made in China, the Washington Post reports.
Credit: Peter Shrank, The Economist
This free-fall of the American economy can be traced back to 2001, when China was officially invited to join the World Trade Organization, with President Bill Clinton pushing hard for it. After they joined later that year, however, the Chinese government almost immediately began practices that were considered hostile to the West – using their new membership in the W.T.O. to give them a new superpower financial status.
And superpower they have become in every conceivable way, with their assault on the American economy and way of life not accidental nor innocent, but what many see now to be a well-thought out plan. According to a November 2, 2009 article in the China Daily newspaper:
Real change in gross domestic product (GDP) since 1990, in percent. Credit: IMF
In 2001, China’s contribution to the world economy was 13%, making it the 6th largest economy in the world. By 2008, they contributed 20%, jumping to the 3rd largest economy. By 2010, it had overtaken Japan to become the world’s 2nd largest economy, only challenged by the United States.
In 2001, China’s foreign trade volume was $509.8 billion. By 2008, it had arisen to a staggering (perhaps even an internationally suffocating) $2.571 trillion – nearly 5 times greater.
The losses of American jobs has been catastrophic
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning economic think tank in Washington, D.C., estimates that America lost 2.7 million jobs as a result of the U.S.-China trade deficit between 2001 and 2011, 2.1 million of them in manufacturing. Wages of American workers have also suffered due to the competition with cheap Chinese labor, EPI says. A typical two-earner household loses around $2,500 per year from this dynamic. According to U.S. News and World Report, jobs were lost in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, though the biggest losses were in: California (475,000 jobs), Texas (240,000 jobs) and New York (nearly 159,000).
Peter Navarro, author the famed best selling book and subsequent award-winning documentary Death by China, paints an even bleaker, more destructive effect: he states that since China started flooding the U.S. market with illegally subsidized goods in 2001, 50,000 American factories have disappeared, 25 million Americans can’t find a “decent job”, and the U.S. now owes at least $3 trillion of its national debt directly to China.
Fast forward to June 2015 – and suddenly it seems, the bully who stole everyone else’s lunch money is the one begging in the street! After their manipulative games on the world stage, I’ll be honest and admit I smiled when I read that their Shanghai Composite stock market – the second largest in the world – over the last 3 weeks has tumbled by more than 32%, shedding an astronomical $3.25 trillion of value – and nothing they do to stem the tide seems to help. To put it in perspective, that amount is equivalent to France’s entire stock exchange valuation, or 60% of Japan’s.
In 2012, Greece’s government had the largest sovereign debt default in history. Greece became the first developed country to fail to make an International Monetary Fund loan repayment on June 30, 2015. At that time, Greece’s government had debts of €323 billion. We have all heard since that this amount threatened to cripple Europe, even cause the expulsion of Greece from the euro. In recent days, a bailout compromise has been reached, but not without the fury of the Greek voters, betrayed by their own Prime Minister into very deep austerity measures.
However, what has happened in the last 3 weeks in China would be the equivalent value of 13 Greek loan defaults.If the Chinese didn’t already have the 2nd largest economy on earth, this would have easily destroyed them beyond repair.
This past week, on July 8, alone, the Shanghai Composite closed down over 5.9% – losing a value of over $500 billion. And this came even after Directors of corporations were told that they could not sell company stock for six months. As reported by Reuters, on July 8 alone, more than 500 China-listed firms also announced trading halts on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, taking total suspensions to about 1,300 companies out of the 2,700 listed on the Shanghai Composite. Those companies represent 45 percent of the market or roughly $2.4 trillion worth of stock – as companies scuttled to sit out the carnage.
The West should do absolutely NOTHING about it. Our own stock exchanges in fact had done rather well – the New York Exchange actually gaining about 500 points during this same period. Possibly, the market is reacting to the good news that some of these Chinese companies have been hindered or even crippled by this reversal – companies that were not only direct competitors of United States counterparts, but some have also been accused of stealing corporate secrets from their American rivals.
So bad was this problem that in 2013, the National Bureau of Asian Research struck a formal Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, and wrote a report bluntly stating, in the Executive Summary:
The scale of international theft of American intellectual property (IP) is unprecedented—hundreds of billions of dollars per year, on the order of the size of U.S. exports to Asia. The effects of this theft are twofold. The first is the tremendous loss of revenue and reward for those who made the inventions or who have purchased licenses to provide goods and services based on them, as well as of the jobs associated with those losses. American companies of all sizes are victimized. The second and even more pernicious effect is that illegal theft of intellectual property is undermining both the means and the incentive for entrepreneurs to innovate, which will slow the development of new inventions and industries that can further expand the world economy and continue to raise the prosperity and quality of life for everyone.
And who are there corporate foreign raiders and thieves? In the Executive Summary of an October 2011 report to the U.S. Congress bluntly entitled Foreign Spies Stealing U.S. Economic Secrets in Cyberspace, the authors stated without hesitation:
Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage. US private sector firms and cybersecurity specialists have reported an onslaught of computer network intrusions that have originated in China, but the IC cannot confirm who was responsible.
To be blunt, let’s get real – China is not our friend, she is not some innocent trading partner. China is the antithesis of everything we stand for in a democratic, capitalistic society. She is our enemy – a communist dictatorship that led America into, and then fought against her indirectly, during both the Korean and the Vietnam Wars. China has not “changed her tune”, she isn’t “turning over a new leaf”. China isn’t “born again”, nor has she “transformed” into a democratic nor capitalistic nation.
And on top of her online espionage, Chinese spies have even freely operated in the U.S. itself. In one recent instance, the Wall Street Journal reported May 19 that “six Chinese citizens, including two professors who trained together at the University of Southern California, stole sensitive wireless technology from U.S. companies and spirited it back to China, the Justice Department charged.”
Here’s the bottom line – China appears to have averted a stock market crash. The Great Depression II may be awhile off now. But they aren’t out of the woods yet. And maybe, this could be a blessing in disguise for American workers, who want …who NEED to see companies bring jobs back to their shores again.
For example, what effect does the Chinese downturn have on U.S. giant Apple, maker of iconic products like the iPad, iPhone, iPod, Apple TV, iMac and so many more? Apple sources most of its materials and makes most of its products in China – but it also now has factories in France, England, Korea – even Inner Mongolia, according to a very interesting infographic produced by Entrepreneurmagazine. It no longer puts all of its….apples…in one basket.
China relies on Apple more – in fact, through its manufacturing partner Foxconn, Apple is now the largest employer in China, with 1.09 million staff. And things have not gone so smoothly with operations there. Apple recently learned the hard way that working conditions in China are not ideal – when 14 staff members at a Foxconn factory staged a mass suicide in 2010, overwhelmed with the workload and horrible conditions.
Apple is also now worth over $700 billion, making it the largest company in world history. It made a profit in the last quarter alone of $18 billion, more than 327 of the S&P 500 put together, and the most ever in the 74-year history of Standard & Poors – after recording sales of 74.5 million new iPhones. In an article recently in Forbes magazine, it was theorized that the computer and telephone giant could survive – possibly even thrive again – without Chinese involvement whatsoever in the company. Forbes estimates that it would cost the company $4.2 billion to move manufacturing back to the United States. Yah, ok, that’s not cheap – but it’s also not even 1/4 … of one quarter’s worth of profit in the past 12 months. And once it’s done, it’s done – most of those estimated costs are not repetitive. According to Entrepreneur magazine, over the long time, the cost difference for an iPhone would be possibly an additional $2-3 (not $203) if they returned the manufacturing back to America.
Apple announced on May it is moving manufacturing of at least some of its iPhones to the Philippines from China. Good for them. But even better, Corporate America – it’s time to bring those jobs back home.It’s time that consumers tell these companies that we’ve had enough. For every Chinese guy making something today, that’s one less manufacturing job in North America, plus several less jobs supporting it – restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, etc. And who makes up that lost tax base for your schools, hospitals, etc.?
China clearly can’t even control their own economy right now – why are they also responsible for controlling ours?
There is a very powerful and ever-growing truth that threatens the very framework and foundations of the People’s Republic of China – so powerful that the government doesn’t want the people within China to even hear about it. The government has managed to even ensure that this truth is not accessible to any of its 1.3 billion people, and that notone webpage with this information has been viewed in the country.
Yet this powerful liberating truth HAS been heard anyway, spread word of mouth across the country. And as of July 2016, 243 million people have acted on this truth, and it’s changed their life forever.
By Unbreakable China, Founding Blog Member Calling Out Community Posted July 8, 2015
We’d love to hear from you:
Bloomberg reported on October 29, 2017 that PetroChina Co. had just suffered the biggest stock slump in world history – yet analysts are not yet convinced that it has finally hit bottom. The state-owned energy producer has lost so much money, it’s now considered the world’s biggest-ever wipeout of shareholder wealth. And it may only get worse. If the average analyst estimate compiled by Bloomberg proves right, PetroChina’s Shanghai shares will sink 16 percent to an all-time low in the next 12 months. If you’ve followed us for any period, you may recall that we reported on July 8, 2015 that China at that time had just had a shocking drop to its stock market of $3.2 TRILLION… in just 3 weeks.READ IT AGAIN: China Stocks Drop $3.2 TRILLION in 3 Weeks
By Unbreakable China,
In 1981, the government mandated that the 
By Unbreakable China, Founding Blog Member
By Unbreakable China, Founding Blog Member
Beijing (2010* pop: 19,612,368) – a metropolis in northern China and the capital of the People’s Republic of China – it is China’s second largest city after Shanghai (with a staggering population of 23,019,200 in 2010)
From its humble foundations as a daily newspaper in Chinese, the Epoch Times grew quickly into a massive, multi-language, international media company in print and online. Headquartered in New York City, the paper is now published in 9 print languages (including English) and web versions in 21 other languages – and with a circulation of more than 1 million copies distributed weekly in newspaper boxes in 35 countries free of charge (including here in Greater Vancouver, Canada where I live and work), it is one of the most powerful voices about China in the world today.
Why? In November 2004, the 
Today, more than 20 million volunteers assist more than 
![Ceremonial deck assembly aboard the JDS Hyūga at the 2010 Ise Bay "Marine Festa" [festival] in Japan.](https://calling1out.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/js_hyc5abga_ise_bay_01.jpg)
