xi pinjing pres
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foto op on corona virus?
2 22
putin pivot to xi china as ukraine sanctions hit
2009 copenhagen india-china
https://www.bustle.com/articles/117126-hillary-clinton-obama-crashing-a-secret-chinese-meeting-seriously-happened-she-described-it-in
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AHA DOH SANCTIONS // TARIFFS TOLL FOR EXTORTION
AN 8 26
President Donald Trump announced that his new strategy for the Iran war returns to his old strategy of deploying sanctions on the country and attempting to isolate it economically. But Trump is giving his friends a pass when it comes to following his new sanctions rules.
MS NOW Rachel Maddow producer Steve Benen argued in a Friday column that Trump has weakened his own policy with sweeping threats against countries that assist Tehran, but then signaled that he may not enforce those threats against Russia or China. The contradiction ultimately undermines the credibility of Trump’s strength at a time when the United States is already struggling to bring its six-month war with Iran to an end.
"It quickly became obvious that the president’s threat was largely meaningless, and the administration’s new policy amounted to little more than another underwhelming threat," wrote Benen.
During an Oval Office signing on Thursday, Trump was asked whether he intends to enforce the sanctions for all countries, including Russia and China. Given that the two countries have been aiding Iran, there was a question about whether Trump would be willing to enforce his rules for his favorite world leaders.
"Well, it depends, it depends,” Trump replied. “So far, I think Russia’s behaved quite well having to do with the Strait of Hormuz. And you have to understand, for everything they do, we do also, you know. Somebody was saying about China, ‘What about China? We hear they’re spying.’ We spy on them too; that’s the way it goes.”
Trump added that it's not as if the U.S. doesn't do the same kind of things, breaking sanctions.
Benen called it "pitiful."
Russia has been shipping drone components to Iran, NBC News reported last week. Another report revealed that Russia has also been sending cash to Iran.
"Instead of acting on this, Trump has largely *defended* Russia, accepted Putin’s denials at face value, and as recently as Thursday, praised Russia for having “behaved quite well,'" Benen said.
Essentially, Benen wrote, the president drew a red line and then gave his pals a pass once they stepped over it.
Meanwhile, he cited the report The Washington Post, indicating “fresh U.S. intelligence indicating that the Kremlin sees the United States as weakened by the Iran war.”
"Trump’s willingness to signal abject weakness isn’t likely to help," he closed.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/world/asia/obama-xi-jinping-china-climate-accord.html
no lnx
Rare Harmony as China and U.S. Commit to Climate Deal
Video
TRANSCRIPT
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The Times Interviews Obama on Climate Change
President Obama spoke to Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times about climate change and conservation during a trip to Midway Atoll to expand a protected national monument to create the world’s largest marine preserve.
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Video]
[President Obama spoke to Julie Hirschfeld Davis of The New York Times about climate change and conservation during a trip to Midway Atoll to expand a protected national monument to create the world’s largest marine preserve.CreditCredit...A.J. Chavar/The New York Times]
By Mark Landler and Jane Perlez
Sept. 3, 2016
HANGZHOU, China — President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed the world’s two largest economies to the Paris climate agreement here on Saturday, cementing their partnership on climate change and offering a rare display of harmony in a relationship that has become increasingly discordant.
On multiple fronts, like computer hacking and maritime security, ties between China and the United States have frayed during the seven and a half years of Mr. Obama’s presidency. The friction has worsened since the ascension of Mr. Xi as a powerful nationalist leader in 2013.
Yet the fact that he and Mr. Obama could set aside those tensions to work together yet again on a joint plan to reduce greenhouse gases attests to the pragmatic personal rapport they have built, as well as to the complexity of the broader United States-China relationship, a tangle of competing and congruent interests.
At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible.
Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world’s emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world’s emissions.
“Despite our differences on other issues, we hope our willingness to work together on this issue will inspire further ambition and further action around the world,” Mr. Obama declared.
Mr. Xi praised the Paris agreement as a milestone, adding, “It was under Chinese leadership that much of this progress was made.”
From the moment he stepped off Air Force One on his final visit to Asia as president, Mr. Obama confronted a resurgent China, undaunted by his efforts to restore America’s presence in the region and poised to capitalize on his troubles in winning congressional passage of his ambitious regional trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Mr. Obama’s chaotic welcome on the tarmac captured the mood on the eve of the G20 summit. There were arguments at the airport between White House aides and Chinese security officials who tried to keep back reporters. Shouting matches also broke out between Mr. Obama’s staff and guards over how many people were allowed into the state guesthouse where he and Mr. Xi later met.
In recent years, the Obama administration has sought to highlight cooperation on climate change, but China’s commitments, first made in 2014, have been less a concession to American pressure than a restatement of its own goals. They include a promise for China’s carbon emissions to reach a plateau or decline “around 2030,” but without any specific target for reductions like those Mr. Obama pledged for the United States (between 26 and 28 percent of 2005 levels by 2025). That means China has plenty of room to continue burning fossil fuels to power its economy.
“The story of the past eight years is not mainly the pivot or the rebalance; it is the very substantial increases in Chinese capacities since 2008,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, who helped formulate Mr. Obama’s Asia strategy as his chief China adviser in the first term.
“How has the U.S. dealt with that?” he added. “How has the U.S. confronted that?”
The Obama administration has experimented with a variety of approaches: pledging to respect China’s “core interests” in 2009; shifting in 2011 to a more assertive stance — verging on containment — as Mr. Obama articulated his pivot to Asia; then resisting China’s proposal in 2012 to embark on a new model of great-power relations.
To some critics, that was an inconsistent strategy — one that alternately cheered or sowed anxiety among American allies, and likewise alienated or emboldened China. Under Mr. Xi’s leadership, China has made aggressive claims to shoals and reefs in the South China Sea, picking fights with neighbors like the Philippines and Vietnam.
“This back and forth has, I think, exacerbated what was already a growing problem with a China that was already more assertive in the context of the financial crisis,” said Michael J. Green, who was the chief Asia adviser on the National Security Council in the George W. Bush administration and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
But the administration’s defenders, like Mr. Bader, argue that Mr. Obama was merely following in the tradition of presidents, Democrat and Republican alike, dating back to Richard M. Nixon. They have tried to manage China’s rise by drawing it into the international system and prodding it to accept rules of the road in trade, navigation and other areas.
However, China has dismissed a recent ruling by an international tribunal in The Hague that rebuked its aggressive reclamation of land on disputed shoals in the South China Sea and invalidated its historical claims to a large swath of those waters.
Mr. Obama was expected to press Mr. Xi to abide by the ruling in a meeting after the climate ceremony, less because he expected the Chinese leader to reverse himself than because the ruling is a vital predicate for undermining the legitimacy of China’s imperial claims.
Still, even after Mr. Obama deployed Navy ships to the Pacific, sent Marines to Australia and paid for greater access to the military bases of an old ally, the Philippines, China now has greater control of the South China Sea than it enjoyed at the start of his presidency.
Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s struggle to pass the Trans-Pacific Partnership has stoked doubts about America’s economic staying power. The 12-nation pact, which excludes China, has become the centerpiece of the pivot to Asia. But it has fallen victim to election-year politics at home and now seems unlikely to pass, even in a lame-duck Congress.
Some of the nations that signed on, particularly Japan — America’s most important Asian ally and a nervous neighbor of China — have made political sacrifices by opening markets in order to meet the standards demanded by the United States. Failure to pass the trade pact, Asian diplomats and analysts said, would leave them feeling burned.
“The Japanese, living in an uncertain world, depending on an American nuclear umbrella, will have to say on trade: ‘The Americans could not follow through,’” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said during a recent visit to Washington, standing next to Mr. Obama. “If it’s a matter of life and death, whom do I have to depend on?”
Mr. Obama and his chief trade negotiator, Michael B. Froman, understand the stakes. They plan a full-court press to sell the pact on this presidential trip — characterizing its passage as a litmus test of American leadership — in hopes that the message will echo back home.
ImagePresident Obama and President Xi Jinping of China formally committed to the Paris climate agreement on Saturday.]
“We are one vote away from cementing our leadership in Asia or ceding it to China,” Mr. Froman said in an interview in Beijing. “I’m not sure Congress wants to hand the keys to the castle to China.”
The Trans-Pacific Partnership is viewed in Asia as the handiwork of Mr. Obama in particular, especially since the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who repeatedly backed it when she was Mr. Obama’s secretary of state, has renounced her support. If Congress fails to pass it, Asian diplomats said, China will emerge as a victor.
“It will be a political disaster and play into the Chinese narrative that China is a geopolitical fact, whereas the U.S. presence is the consequence of a geopolitical calculation which could change and thus is not reliable,” said Bilahari Kausikan, the ambassador at large for Singapore.
In practical terms, the United States would lose the chance to shape the economic future of the region, allowing China to forge ahead with its “Sino-centric economic order,” which includes a multibillion-dollar project to build a new Silk Road linking Asia to Europe.
Mr. Bader is among several American officials who are guardedly confident that the next presidential administration will find a way to win approval for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, perhaps by adding side agreements on contentious points. But he expressed concern that the South China Sea would be a chronic source of friction.
“The situation hasn’t stabilized,” Mr. Bader said. “Achieving that is beyond the capacity of the U.S. alone.”
China has extended its military reach there by building artificial islands with airfields, facilities that American commanders have said they regard as military bases. Although China appears to be taking stock of the situation since the unfavorable ruling in The Hague, Chinese military officials warn that they will continue with their building program in the waterway.
“China will never stop our construction,” the head of China’s navy, Adm. Wu Shengli, said in July.
Last month, China took delivery of a dredger, one of the biggest in its inventory, from a Dutch shipyard. The vessel would be suitable for dredging at Scarborough Shoal, a disputed reef 150 miles from the Philippines.
China, some academics say, plans to create an extremely large artificial island that would complete a strategic triangle of bases in the sea.
“Obama is seen as reluctant to push back,” said Alan Dupont, a former defense intelligence analyst for the Australian government. “He has allowed China to militarize the islands in the South China Sea. The United States hasn’t put it at the top of its list.”
To reassure its allies, Mr. Dupont said, the United States would have to reinforce its military presence in the Pacific even further than it has under Mr. Obama’s pivot, or rebalance, as it has also been called.
“There has to be a rebalance plus,” he said.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/steve-bannons-use-of-private-jet-linked-to-chinese-businessman-could-violate-campaign-finance-law/
no lnx
Steve Bannon’s use of private jet linked to Chinese businessman could violate campaign finance law
Written by Justin Elliott / ProPublica February 26, 2020
Former Donald Trump campaign CEO and chief strategist Steve Bannon used a private jet apparently owned by a wealthy Chinese businessman to fly to events to promote Republican congressional candidates in 2018.
The previously unreported flights could run afoul of a campaign finance law that bars foreign money from U.S. elections, according to campaign finance experts, though it depends on several factors that are not known. One of the unknowns is whether Bannon paid Guo Wengui — the Chinese businessman, who is a vocal critic of the Chinese regime, and with whom he has other reported financial ties — for the use of the jet.
Bannon flew on the jet, a Bombardier Global Express that can seat up to 13 people, to 2018 events supporting Republican candidates in New Mexico and Arizona. He also flew on it to Mexico City and New York, and possibly to other cities. The flights were confirmed by footage taken for “The Brink,” a 2019 documentary about Bannon, and by videos of Guo on the plane, interviews and FAA flight records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.
“The foreign-national prohibition is the broadest prohibition in the Federal Election Campaign Act,” said Brett Kappel, a government affairs partner at the Akerman law firm, speaking generally. “It prohibits foreign nationals from making any contribution or donation in connection with any election in the United States. It also precludes foreign nationals from making in-kind contributions, such as paying for campaign-related travel.”
The same law also prohibits receiving such a donation. Bannon’s one-way trip from New York to New Mexico alone would be worth around $35,000, according to public jet charter rates.
Lawyers for Bannon and Guo (who is also known as Miles Kwok) did not dispute that Bannon used the Chinese businessman’s plane for trips. But Cleta Mitchell, an attorney representing Bannon’s nonprofit, Citizens of the American Republic, wrote in an email, “The meetings and rallies hosted by COAR in 2018 were to promote thefilm, Trump\@War, and to encourage Trump supporters to vote in 2018. These were not candidate or campaign rallies.” Guo’s attorney said in a statement that “Mr. Guo has not participated in or supported, directly or indirectly, any political activity or party in the United States or elsewhere. To the contrary, Mr. Guo has consistently emphasized that he has no desire to participate in politics anywhere.”
Nothing about the trips appears to have been disclosed to the Federal Election Commission, either by Bannon or the congressional candidates he traveled to support.
Guo told Vice in 2017 that he owns two private jets. Han Lianchao, a Guo associate, told ProPublica, “I know he allowed Steve to use his private jet from time to time.” Han said he did not know the specifics of their arrangement. A Bannon aide also told Alison Klayman, the filmmaker who made “The Brink” and flew on the jet, that it belonged to Guo, Klayman told ProPublica.
In one scene in the film, Bannon is shown on the plane praising Guo’s analysis of Chinese politics while on a flight from New York to Dallas in October 2018.
Official records don’t identify the ultimate owner of the jet, which bears the tail number T7-GQM. The jet is registered in the tiny Republic of San Marino to Whitecroft Shore Limited. That, in turn, is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands, an offshore dominion known for secrecy. There are multiple videos online of Guo that appear to be taken on the plane that match independent photos of the interior and exterior of the jet with the same tail number. Other articles link the jet to Guo.
Bannon left the Trump White House in the summer of 2017 and has spent the past couple of years jetting around the country and the globe to promote right-wing causes, candidates and his own brand. It is a continuing mystery who is supporting his efforts. His use of the Guo plane helps fill out the picture.
The unlikely relationship between Bannon and Guo is one of the defining features of Bannon’s post-White House career. It continues through the present, with Bannon and Guo frequently appearing together on Bannon’s podcast and Guo’s news site commenting on Trump, China and the coronavirus, among other topics.
Guo, who has described himself as a successful real estate developer and investor, left China for the U.S. in 2015 and is reportedly seeking asylum. He is a critic of Chinese leaders, churning out a stream of online videos commenting on the news of the day, from the coronavirus to his “crusade against communism.” The Chinese government has, in turn, sought Guo’s arrest on corruption allegations, which he has denied. Guo frequently appears in videos with Bannon, who has predicted a war between the U.S. and China and says he is currently producing a “takedown” film about Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The New York Times recently reported that Bannon’s relationship with Guo began with a $150,000 loan to Bannon shortly after his 2017 departure from the Trump administration. Axios reported that a company linked to Guo had contracted with Bannon for at least $1 million for “strategic consulting services,” beginning in August 2018. (A Guo spokesman told Axios that the contract was for media investment and other consulting, and that Guo “had no involvement in [Bannon] being retained.”)
In fall 2018, Bannon and his dark money organization, Citizens of the American Republic, were pushing to keep Republican control of Congress during the midterm elections. A Bannon aide told ABC at the time that the group had an election war room focused on “explaining that a vote for any House Republican is a vote to stop the Democrats.”
Bannon made the trips to promote GOP candidates on the Bombardier jet in October 2018, under the aegis of Citizens of the American Republic. (The organization raised a total of $4.5 million in 2018 from a handful of donors, according to its filing with the IRS. But as a “social welfare” nonprofit organized under section 501(c)4 of the Internal Revenue Code, it is not required to reveal its donors.)
One of the trips was to Arizona in support of congressional candidate Wendy Rogers. Bannon told the Arizona Daily Star at the time: “If she can beat [Rep. Tom] O’Halleran, we’ll hold the House. We’ll hold the House by one or two seats. And that’s why it’s so important, and that’s why I wanted to come down here.”
Rogers, who ultimately lost the race, didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The trip to Roswell, New Mexico, featured U.S. Senate candidate Mick Richand a screening of Bannon’s film “Trump\@War.” According to video from the Roswell event viewed by ProPublica, Bannon and Rich strategized about the campaign before Bannon’s public remarks. “Tell me about this race,” Bannon said in the video. “How are we going to win this thing? I’ll come back here as many times as — ” Rich interjected: “Getting you out here is number one.” Rich also asked if Bannon could get President Trump to tweet about the race, and Bannon said he would try.
During the public event, Rich introduced Bannon, who in turn praised the Senate candidate as a “real populist.” Bannon urged the audience members to vote for pro-Trump candidates.
Rich lost the 2018 race and is running again this year. A spokesman told ProPublica in a statement that “Mick and his campaign had no knowledge of Bannon’s transportation to or from the event. Mick and his campaign had no coordination of any kind with Steve Bannon or any Steve Bannon group before, during, or after this event.”
Craig Holman, a campaign finance expert at Public Citizen, said that the New Mexico event “could well implicate Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui for violating the law that prohibits foreign nationals from paying for campaign activities,” if the Federal Election Commission deemed the event to be an “independent expenditure” by Bannon’s group, or a Rich campaign event.
The FEC doesn’t currently have a quorum and it, along with the IRS, have historically done little to scrutinize political nonprofits like Bannon’s.
Apart from the use of the jet, there’s also the question of whether the event would run afoul of the rules barring an outside group like Bannon’s from coordinating with the candidate, Rich.
Adav Noti of the Campaign Legal Center said political nonprofits are operating in a grey area because of the FEC’s failure to outline rules for what sort of contact they are permitted to have with a candidate. “To any rational person that looks at this, of course it’s a campaign event. But it might be allowed, which is the scandal.”
In a March 2018 filing in an unrelated lawsuit, an attorney for Guo noted the prohibition on Guo making expenditures in connection with U.S. elections. He wrote that “Because Plaintiff Guo is a foreign national, he is prohibited, by 52 U.S.C. 30121, from making any contributions, monetary donations or expenditures in connection with any federal, state or local election in the United States.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/trumps-top-economic-aide-just-made-a-stunning-admission-about-the-presidents-dealing-with-china
no lnx
Trump’s top economic aide just made a stunning admission about the president’s dealings with China
White House Director of Economic Policy Larry Kudlow addresses reporters Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2018, in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room of White House, on the upcoming G-20 summit in Buenos Aires, Argentina. (Official White House Photo by Keegan Barber)
Written by Cody Fenwick December 19, 2019
White House Director of Economic Policy Larry Kudlow made a stunning admission on Wednesday as he was discussing President Donald Trump’s trade negotiations with China.
Eamon Javers, a CNBC journalist covering the economy, reported on the remarks Kudlow made to a group of reporters. Kudlow said that Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s former secretary of State, had recently been to the White House — and he has also recently met with Chinese leader Xi Jinping twice.
“I asked if Kissinger is playing a back channel role in trade talks,” Javers said.
“Well, now you’re getting into the family jewels,” Kudlow responded.
This alone is a jarring revelation. Kissinger has been persuasively accused of international war crimes as he has enabled dictators and mass atrocities abroad. Having ties to Kissinger, let alone having him actively work to shape policy, should be toxic for any sitting politician.
And then he went on:
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
Replying to @EamonJavers
Kudlow saidPresident Xi told Kissingerthat he would rather “deal with President Trump, who will focus more on trade in the economy, rather than democrats who won't talk about key trade issues, but instead will go on about human rights and other things.”
Eamon Javers
@EamonJavers
Replying to @EamonJavers
He added: “Now, let me be careful here. President Trump made it very clear that we favor freedom and democracy and a peaceful solution in Hong Kong, and that we oppose, of course, the maltreatment of the Muslims and the Uigurs.”
Of course, it’s no secret that Trump doesn’t about human rights abuses in China — or anywhere. Nothing about his moves on foreign policy or his public statements have given any indication that he genuinely cares about countering authoritarian regimes, promoting democracy, or empowering the rights of minorities. And Trump openly embraces and lauds brutal rulers like Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, while often spurning the leaders of democratic allies of the United States.
But still, Kudlow’s caveat aside, it was remarkable for a top adviser to the president to admit on the record that the Chinese prefer Trump over Democrats because he doesn’t “go on about human rights and other things.”
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at almost every turn for the past 365 days, California GovernorJerry Brownhas undermined President Trump. In June, almost immediately after Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement, Brown partnered withChinese President Xi Jinpingto continue expanding green technology and trade. In July, Brown extended California's climate legislation to reducegreenhouse gas emissions, to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. And as wildfires have raged through the state and region,Brown saidhe was "linking with other similar-minded people all over the world" and "pushing forward even as Trump blusters."
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woo'd trump? fooled?
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