Manifest Destiny Done Right. China and Russia Succeed Where the U.S. Failed

January 22, 2022

Matthew Ehret

Source

The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

-Abraham Lincoln

It should be obvious that the world is being sucked into a new Cold War, with old school iron curtains, anti-communist rhetoric and even nuclear sabre rattling pushed by unipolar war hawks in the west. Unlike the first Cold War, this new variant strain features Russia and China working closely together along with Iran and a growing chorus of nations who are increasingly integrating into the Belt and Road Initiative.

What crime have these Eurasian nations committed such that the U.S./NATO military industrial complex has placed targets on them?

Simply that they have chosen to not submit to a unipolar technocratic scientific dictatorship.

Instead of embracing a dystopic destiny locked inside a shrinking geopolitical cage as Boris Yeltsin or Zhao Ziyang were happy to do not too long ago, today’s Eurasian intelligentsia has recognized that the only solution to the multifaceted crisis threatening civilization is located in the future. This may sound like a simplistic platitude to some, but from a geostrategic standpoint, the future is where creativity lives.

When resources are monopolized and systems of rules shaped by a sociopathic elite antagonistic to the basic rights of humanity, the only viable pathway of resistance to engage in successful combat is to change the rules of the rigged game and create new resources. This is done by increasing the opportunity to 1) make new discoveries which 2) create new resources, 3) translate newly discovered principles into new technological improvements that 4) increase the productive powers (mental, spiritual and physical) of humanity. If steps 1-4 don’t exist in the present, then where are they to be found?

I say it again: The Future.

The concept of positive future ideals teleologically (1) driving society forward was a powerful notion that once governed much of western civilization. The idea that man was made in the living image of a Creator, capable of participating in the continuous process of creation itself was an empowering notion which animated some of the greatest upward leaps in scientific progress, liberty, sovereignty, increased quality of life and population growth ever seen. In the early United States, this concept became known as “manifest destiny”… that God had a plan to expand the best of civilization and extend the fruits of progress to all in order to fulfill the Biblical mandate that humanity was expected to “be fruitful and multiply” and “replenish the earth and subdue it”.

While many goods to humanity arose out of this idea, it was also a double-edged sword that did great damage if used by tyrants, slave owners, or imperialists who ignored the reality that ALL humanity was endowed by the creator with inalienable rights, and not just a select few who felt they had the right breeding, religion, language, or racial characteristics.

A popular painting extolling the virtue of manifest destiny during the pioneering days of the 19^th century which at times resulted in great good and at many other times, justified great evil

A New Eurasian Manifest Destiny Awakens

In Russia, this future orientation has taken the form of a sort of 21^st century “Russian Manifest Destiny” which aims to extend civilization into the Siberian Far East and Arctic, and beyond Central Asia, Mongolia, Japan, China and beyond. While many are accustomed to myopically analyze world events from a “bottom up” mode of analysis, it is clear that

Since 2018, Russia’s eastern development ambitions have increasingly merged with China’s northern extension of the BRI dubbed The Polar Silk Road which has amplified the growth of railways, roads, telecommunication hubs, ports, energy projects and sea corridors through regions long thought inhospitable to human civilization.

China has seen the birth of its own version of “Manifest Destiny” in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative, which was unveiled in 2013, displaying a power of transformation, interconnectivity, and win-win cooperation beyond anything even its greatest fans imagined eight years ago. Within a short period of time, over $3 trillion has been spent on small, medium and large-scale infrastructure projects now involving 140 nations (to varying degrees of participation.)

Glancing across the thousands of BRI projects springing up around the globe, we find the greatest array of rail lines (including high speed: maglev and conventional), integrated development corridors, new smart cities, new industrial hubs, pipelines and advanced science initiatives touching on space exploration, atomic power, fusion research, quantum computing and much more.

These corridors of development have stretched through northern lines via Russia as well as Central Asian states which includes the “Middle Corridor of the BRI”. More recently, we have seen the blossoming of a southern route from China to Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon also take form with Syria finally signing up on January 12^th, 2022. Nations across Africa have also enthusiastically jumped on board with over 48 of 54 African nations signing onto the BRI. Currently, 18 Ibero American and 20 Arab states have also joined the program.

Must Diversity Be Sacrificed for Unity?

Both China and Russia have extremely large nations with vast potential in terms of undeveloped resources, manpower, and technological needs, but they also host a diverse array of smaller cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic groups from all walks of life.

The vast majority of Russia’s 146 million citizens live in the Westernmost 1/5^th of the country with 80% of the population living in or near urban zones extending from the Baltic to Caspian Sea. In the expansive north-eastern regions of Siberia (occupying a landmass 1.3 times the size of Canada), only 24 million citizens are diffused throughout this underpopulated land.

China faces similar problems with its population density and developed sectors locked up not in the west, but narrowly along its eastern pacific coast. Nearly 94% of China’s population still lives in the east of the Heihe-Tengchong Line with the vast inner heartland housing only 6% of the Chinese population.

Russia hosts 193 ethnic groups comprising nearly 20% of its population and although China’s Han population is by far the largest demographic (representing 91% of the population), there are 56 distinct ethnic groups representing 113 million people, many of whom live scattered across Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia.

The pressing quandary faced by Eurasian leaders planning out their programs of outward expansion can be stated in the following manner: How is it possible to extend scientific and industrial development across multi-ethnic, multi-linguistic territories both domestically and internationally without destroying the cultural heritage of the hundreds, if not thousands of smaller cultural groups along the way? Must development always occur at the expense of cultural diversity of smaller ethnic groups as has been too often the case in world history, OR is there an organic way to balance both factors?

How NOT to do Manifest Destiny

The irony is that up until recently, the concept of Manifest Destiny has been traditionally associated with the United States which shares many demographic characteristics with both China and Russia with the vast majority of population concentrated in the eastern half of the continent.

Sadly, the forces who shaped American expansion- especially during those first 125 years when Manifest Destiny had its greatest influence, have too often failed this test miserably. In its first 12 decades of life, the USA grew from 13 backward colonies in 1776 to 45 industrially-advanced states in 1900. Throughout those years, the wiser anti-slavery voices of Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Charles Sumner, William Seward, and William Gilpin were too often subverted by an anglophile deep state parasite class that ran both Wall Street in the north and the southern slave power.

This multiheaded hydra lurking within the heart of the USA had its own perverse ideas of “Manifest Destiny” which stood in diametric opposition to the ambitions of the great statesmen listed above.

Where abolitionist-leading figures like Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton encouraged the sharing of knowledge, technical skills, science and the fruits of technological progress to both blacks and natives without forcing religious conversions or crushing their local traditions, the deep state in both northern and southern zones of influence sought to only expand their power through the conquerors whip.

The southern perversion of Manifest Destiny promoted by Andrew Jackson, Jefferson Davis and Albert Pike envisioned increased black slavery and Native Americans crushed under the heel of the “superior” white race, and cordoned off into cage-like plantations or reservations never to have a say in their own destiny. Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act emptied out valuable lands quickly handed over to southern cotton planters who quickly expanded the influx of black slaves from Africa vastly increasing the tension between free vs slave states leading to the inevitable Civil War of 1861-65.

It is often forgotten that under the Mazzini-connected freemasonic-laden presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis (later Confederate President) and General Albert Pike were in charge of advancing a “southern alternative” to the trans continental railway through slave states. Unlike the northern line (begun by Lincoln in 1863) which was designed to spread industrial growth and ultimately connect with China, (2) the southern version simply served as an iron cage to keep the enslaved under the control of masters. In this way, the confederate “Manifest Destiny” was no different from the Cecil Rhodes racist vision of the Cape to Cairo rail line that sought to keep the continent under the British heel or today’s EU-London “Green Belt Initiative”/OSOWOG Plan to force green energy grids from Africa to India.

During the Civil War, the British were more than happy providing weapons, warships, logistic support, intelligence hubs in Canada and funding to the rebels nearly resulting in Lincoln fighting a war on two fronts early on (one against the south and the other against the British Empire) (3).

While the legitimate defenders of American Manifest Destiny sought to avoid war, relying instead on diplomacy to grow their territories (see: the Louisiana purchase of 1804, Oregon Territory in 1848, or Alaska purchase of 1867), the “America” of Wall Street and Virginia’s slave power were always happy to pick a fight with a neighbor to spread their imperial ambitions (see the Mexican war of 1846-48, or overthrow of Hawaii’s monarchy in 1893).

Unfortunately, those American traditions that once resisted imperialism have withered away, with today’s republic a poor shell of its former self, purged of genuine patriots in positions of federal power. Today’s USA has hollowed out its industrial base, destroyed its cultural connection to Christian values and its faith in scientific progress resulting in an alienated nation of nihilistic consumers without a vision for the future.

The Growth of Eco-Colonialism in the 20^th Century

The racist program of ghettoization of natives in the form of tribal reservations has segregated First Nation tribes from the rest of society for generations, keeping them locked into cycles of dependence, poverty, substance abuse, infant mortality rates and suicide magnitudes higher than the national average.

This manipulation of Native Americans has also seen these abused people used by game masters attempting to block broader continental development projects under a policy of “human ecosystems-management”. Since the late 1960s, it has become increasingly fashionable to treat native populations as just extensions of their local ecosystems- both of which are presumed to exist in stationary equilibrium by computer models which have been used to calculate conservation regions and optimal population growth for decades.

For anyone struggling to understand why the large-scale economic growth policy advanced by the likes of Franklin Roosevelt and JFK were derailed in the late 1960s with the onset of the Vietnam War, understanding this racist use of native reserves and ecosystem management is vital. The vast growth of conservation parks and federal lands kept off limits from all infrastructure investment was not the effect of warm-hearted nature lovers as many have been led to believe, but rather the effect of a cold calculated policy by geopolitical gamemasters intent on keeping society locked into a small controlled world of “limited resources”.

Image: Conservation lands (top) and national reserve parks (below): National Academy of Sciences of North America

While liberal imperialists shed crocodile tears for the plight of natives long abused by selfish white colonizers, they were too happy supporting mass sterilization of native women throughout the 1970s, and keeping the natives without clean drinking water, reliable electricity, healthcare or even access to quality jobs.

One of the most vocal proponents of the trans-continental railway (extending into Eurasia) was Lincoln-ally William Gilpin (Colorado Governor during the Civil War) who astutely identified the reservations to be “like blocks of stone in the wall of a jail against the frontier line”.

Under the veil of this new type of modern colonialism, money was often infused into the coffers of corrupt tribal leaders who have been happy letting oil cartels exploit their resources while keeping their people locked in cycles of dependence and zero technological growth.

From this perspective, one can see a clear parallel in the application of a similar neo-colonial policy applied to Africa.

China: A Manifest Destiny with Dignity

Despite the loud denunciations from the western Five Eyes-managed political class, China’s approach to both African BRI partners and their own minority groups stands in stark contrast to this nefarious tradition of exploitation and cultural genocide deployed by the western oligarchy for generations.

What we have seen in places like Tibet and Xinjiang are cultural heritage centers, exploding literacy rates, the celebration and teaching of traditional languages, songs, stories and dances given full government patronage.

While evidence of this cultural growth has grown across all minority ethnic zones, we have also seen a dramatic growth in longevity, population density, quality of life, poverty reduction, infant mortality reduction, and access to advanced industrial skills, clean water, internet and abundant electricity.

On a religious level, over 24,400 mosques currently exist in Xinjiang, not to mention 59 Buddhist temples and 253 churches. In only eight years, the bane of Saudi-U.S. funded terrorism in China has been dealt with without a single Arab state bombed back to the stone age which is no small accomplishment.

In Tibet, high speed and conventional rail has connected the local communities that had long lived in poverty, to broader global markets with durable technical skills and training growing vibrantly among the younger population.

Buddhist temples are also thriving with the full support of the government. NED-controlled propaganda outlets in either region would have you remain blind to these demonstrable facts of Chinese life.

While concessions favoring Chinese firms are certainly built into most BRI-connected projects springing up across Southwest Asia, Africa, and beyond, the fact is that infrastructure (both hard and soft), new industrial hubs and educational opportunities are springing to life at breakneck speed.

Across Africa, we have found local cultural traditions thrive in tandem with the same policy we have witnessed in Tibet and Xinjiang. If this is news to you, try putting down the Epoch Times and watching some local African news or CGTN’s African channels.

China’s approach stands in stark contrast to those IMF-World Bank-USAID programs that have systematically kept poor nations in usurious debt-trap enslavement for decades providing money to buy a few fish, but never allowed the capability to fish for themselves. China, on the other hand has encouraged the growth of vast construction projects, manufacturing hubs, and perhaps most importantly, advanced engineering skills.

Overcoming Russia’s Monetarist Obstacles

In Russia, a privatized central banking system still largely influenced by monetary protocols shaped by the IMF has made actualizing Putin’s Far Eastern vision much more difficult than in China where a vibrant state owned banking system provides an invaluable instrument of long-term growth. Russia’s private central bank, established (in its current form) in 1990, still suffers from deep-seeded structural ties to the IMF, WTO and liberal ideologues swarming across the bureaucratic landscape ensuring that a doctrine of “balanced budgets” and free markets takes precedence over the emission of productive credit.

Despite these blocks, Russia’s unique version of Manifest Destiny has begun to spring into life with Sergei Shoigu’s “grand masterplan for Siberia” starting with the construction of five new cities housing 500,000 to a million citizens.

Additionally, the plans to expand and improve both the 9300 km Trans-Siberian Railway and its 4300 km southern Baikur-Amal Mainline rail being modernized, double tracked and integrated ever more deeply into Mongolia, China and even Japan. This dovetails the expanding International North South Transportation Corridor from Moscow to India via central Asia and Iran which should now be seen as another dimension of BOTH the BRI and Far East Vision [see map below]. As the project advances, freight traffic along these rail lines will increase from 120 million tons/year to 180 million tons/year in 2024.

This rail expansion is tied closely to Russia’s Development Plan for the Northern Sea Route adopted in 2019 and which seeks to increase annual shipments to 80 million tons by 2024. On top of ports and new arctic mining hubs, this plan includes the construction of 40 new vessels (including more nuclear icebreakers), railways, and northern seaports which will see 10 days of shipping time slashed from goods between China and Europe.

If this wasn’t enough, on January 15, 2022, Putin announced that proposals to construct a long awaited Arctic railway to the Barents Sea must be submitted by May 10 2022.  This rail will extend to the Indiga Port in the Nenets Region which will host a year-round arctic port with a capacity of processing 80-200 million tons of cargo/year.

China and Russia have agreed to build Arctic science research centers in 2019 in order to “promote the construction of ‘Silk Road on Ice’”, while new designs for a new international scientific research base in Yamal called Snezhinka (aka: “Snowflake”) will be opened in 2022. In both instances, pure scientific research on Astro-climatology (the Arctic is the densest entry point for interstellar cosmic radiation which plays a driving role in climate change), species evolution and chemistry will be done in such new centers. Perhaps the most exciting fields of research will involve the testing of new artificial ecosystem designs requisite for sustaining human life comfortably not only in the Arctic but also on other celestial bodies like the Moon or Mars. Both nations have after all, agreed to co-develop a permanent lunar base which will be unveiled in the coming decade.

If we can avoid the trappings of nuclear war, then the discoveries that will be made along this exciting new chapter of inter-civilizational development are beyond the capacity of any computer model to predict, but they will happen nonetheless. The unleashing of creative discoveries by educated, inspired, goal-oriented human minds will increasingly awaken new technologies, and redefine humanity’s relationship to the periodic table of elements as new uses are found for the atom with wider access to the thousands of isotopes that still have yet to find a role in our economic systems. In this way, space and time itself will be condensed as magnetic levitation rail, nuclear propulsion systems and new energy sources will be brought online revolutionizing our ideas of “near”, “far”, “slow” and “fast” in dramatic ways.

Just think of the many months one would have to travel from old to new worlds in colonial days, to the mere hours such a transit takes on a hypersonic plane today. This is the sort of quantum leap expected as the 300 days transit to Mars currently required with chemical rockets will fall to a matter of weeks with nuclear propulsion.

Perhaps one might wish to accuse me of an overabundance of idealism, but so what?

This process is already unfolding before our very eyes, as political and scientific realities which many thought impossible only a decade ago, have already begun changing the trajectory of our collective future. If humanity’s phase shift into a mature self-conscious species is subverted once more… at a time when thermonuclear weapons litter the globe, there is no guarantee that we will get another chance.

This one-two punch from China and Russia marks the end of American adventurism

15 Jan, 2022 

By Bradley Blankenship

Source

FILE PHOTO. © Getty Images / Gokhan Sahin

Syria’s inclusion in the Belt and Road Initiative is the final act in a long saga against American imperialism that shows how China and Russia can effectively counter U.S. intervention in the future.

Damascus officially joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on Wednesday, which will provide a massive lifeline to the country that has been torn to shreds after more than a decade of war and Western sanctions. But more than this, this development has set a precedent that will fundamentally change the geopolitical landscape. 

This is because the decade-spanning Syrian conflict has hosted several proxy conflicts, which has invariably left the United States and its Western allies the losers. 

For starters, while the conflict itself was, at least initially, part of the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, numerous sources (including U.S. government sources published by WikiLeaks) suggest that the United States had been seeking regime change in Syria long before then. There are also countless reports by very good journalists, including on RT, that have dug up these connections.

However, this attempt devolved so quickly, and was so futile and messy, that the U.S. had ended up siding with the very terrorists it sought to destroy in the wake of 9/11. Syria was almost completely overrun by the likes of Islamic State (formerly ISIS; the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) and was on the verge of becoming a terror nexus – until Russia intervened in September 2015.

This was not a Russian invasion per se, but a legitimate intervention based on an invitation from Syrian President Bashar Assad. I was actually in college when this happened and remember discussing on my radio show how huge of a deal this was. Another major power was cleaning up America’s mess with boots on the ground. 

From then until now, the UN-recognized Syrian government has managed to regain virtually all its territory, and extremist elements like the Islamic State group have been pushed back. There remain a few holdouts, for example, near the Turkish border and in the country’s southeast still occupied by U.S. forces, but the difficulty faced in the country’s attempt to get back to normal has to do with external forces.

There’s the diplomatic side, but, since Syria has continued as a UN member, this has primarily been a regional issue. Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended in 2011 as the conflict began, however it’s highly anticipated that it will be readmitted very soon – perhaps even at the group’s next summit in March. 

Other welcoming signs of Syria’s normalization are the fact that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain both reopened their Syrian embassies, Jordan reopened its border with Syria in September and the global law enforcement body Interpol readmitted Syria to its ranks in October. 

But the main problem for a true normalization of Syria on the world stage is its access to international finance and trade, which has been nearly impossible thanks to U.S.-led sanctions, including the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019, called the Caesar Act. 

Journalists have reported since the implementation of these latest sanctions that they have actually been more detrimental to the country than the war itself, and this corrosive effect has also extended to the country’s neighbors, like Lebanon. Never mind the intended effects of these sanctions, the reality is that they are artificially placing the country in a position where rebuilding from this devastating war is impossible. 

Enter China. As the second-largest economy in the world and the driving force behind the greatest global infrastructure and development drive in history, the BRI is a natural fit for Syria. It will help the country rebuild, rebound and provide win-win opportunities for both countries while also likely bringing the conflict, finally, to an end. It is the quintessential example of how America bombs and China builds. 

While that is certainly something on its own, in the context of how this U.S.-led foreign intervention was resisted largely thanks to Russia, I believe it shows a sort of one-two punch that can and will be repeated. 

Even if this was not coordinated originally, it is a precedent I believe both Moscow and Beijing should and undoubtedly will apply elsewhere. It goes to show that Washington’s military and economic aggression can both be countered if Russia and China work in tandem as a bulwark against unilateralism. It’s for this reason I believe Syria will be the graveyard of American adventurism. 

The Infowar On Xinjiang Failed, Now They’re Targeting Pakistan & PM Imran Khan

By Andrew Korybko
Source

The Western Mainstream Media’s infowar about the true state of the anti-terrorist situation in Xinjiang failed after a group of diplomats and journalists were unprecedentedly allowed to visit some of the education and job-training facilities in the strategically located province, after which the weaponized narrative was tweaked to become one of “China buying off Pakistan’s silence”, which dishonestly portrays the Muslim Great Power’s pious leader as a religious hypocrite and dangerously risks provoking terrorist attacks against him and his government.   

2018 was predominantly characterized by four main stories for Pakistan – the rise of Imran Khan as Pakistan’s latest Prime Minister; the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan’s (TLP) anti-blasphemy protests and subsequently seditious calls for acts of terrorism against the state; the Hybrid War on CPEC that peaked near the end of the year with the Karachi & Chabahar attacks and the first-mentioned mastermind’s assassination in Afghanistan; and the creeping awareness of the Western Mainstream Media’s infowar narrative about China’s alleged treatment of the Uighur in Xinjiang. It’s therefore not surprising that all four of them are still relevant at the beginning of 2019, but there are worrying signs that hostile perception managers are attempting to weave them together as part of a renewed destabilization campaign against Pakistan.

The Hybrid War on CPEC received an unexpected setback after one of the so-called “Balochistan Liberation Army’s” (BLA) top terrorists was assassinated in Afghanistan right before the New Year, which occurred just a few weeks before China’s unpreceded diplomatic and journalistic opening in Xinjiang when it recently allowed members of both professional communities to visit some of its education and job-training facilities that it constructed there as part of its anti-terrorist operations in the strategically located province. Beijing even announced that UN officials are welcome to travel to the region as well, provided of course that they follow the proper procedures and don’t interfere in the country’s domestic affairs. These two developments are the reason why the weaponized narratives that were unleashed against both countries are now being tweaked.

Recognizing that the BLA terrorists were dealt a mighty blow by the recent assassination of one of their leaders and the growing popularity of Dr. Jumma Marri Khan’s Overseas Pakistani Baloch Unity (OPBU) that peacefully reintegrates wayward overseas Baloch into Pakistani society, and realizing that the world is becoming aware of the fact that the scandalous stories about China’s treatment of the Uighur in Xinjiang are fake news, the forces that are hostile to both multipolar Great Powers are scrambling to adapt their infowar techniques to these changed conditions. It’s with this situational context in mind that one should approach the latest claims coming from the popular American-based financial and business news site Business Insider, which just published a very inaccurate portrayal of Pakistani-Chinese relations.

In an article titled “Pakistan abruptly stopped calling out China’s mass oppression of Muslims. Critics say Beijing bought its silence”, one of the outlet’s news reporters attempted to make the case that China paid Pakistan off so that it wouldn’t use its influence in the larger international Muslim community (“Ummah”) to rally its co-confessionals against Beijing’s alleged mistreatment of the Uighur. The author drew attention to a widely publicized fake news report that the country’s Federal Minister for Religious Affairs supposedly brought this topic up in a critical way when meeting with the Chinese Ambassador last September. Bothofficials later denied the media’s reports about their talks, but the damage was already done because few people who heard the fake news were made aware of their response.

The writer then tried to make it seem like PM Khan was sidestepping the Uighur issue after reminding her audience about Chinese support for Pakistan’s economy, with her innuendo being that “Beijing bought its silence”. She then quotes two people to press home this point, the second of whom is Peter Irwin, who’s described as a “project manager” at the so-called “World Uyghur Congress” (WUC). Unbeknownst to her audience and conspicuously left out of her report, that man functions as a spokesman for an organization that many in China and beyond believe to be the political wing of the so-called “Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement” (ETIM) which was designated as a terrorist group by the UN in 2002. This makes it very disturbing that his words were included by the author in the article’s title.

After declaring that China was “buying the silence of Pakistan”, Irwin goes on to say that “he knows he simply needs to keep his mouth shut”, concluding that “someone like Khan has a very good idea of the balance of power in their relationship with China.” This dangerously insinuates that PM Khan and his government are being paid to stay silent about the plight of Muslims, which would make them religious hypocrites if it was true and accordingly paint them as targets of Takfiri terrorists (i.e. those who target alleged “infidels”/”apostates”). Dolkun Isa, the WUC leader who China regards as a terrorist, recently slammed Muslim countries for not supporting him, so it might be that Irwin was tasked by his boss to weaponize this narrative against Pakistan and PM Khan personally.

This is exceptionally dangerous in the Pakistani context because leaders of the TLP opposition party were arrested late last year on charges of sedition and terrorism after they called on their supporters to commits acts of violence against state officials on the purported basis that they were violating fundamentalist Islamic tenets following the Supreme Court’s acquittal of a Christian woman who was previously convicted of blasphemy during a high-profile case. Some of the group’s most religiously extremist sympathizers inside of Pakistan and abroad might interpret Irwin’s hypocrite/infidel/apostate insinuation that he just spread on the globally famous Business Insider information outlet about the pious Prime Minister as a “call to action”, just like Isa might have planned to happen all along as punishment for Pakistan’s refusal to support his narrative.

The WUC-ETIM’s intention seems to be to rekindle the Hybrid War on CPEC by expanding it beyond its now-contained Baloch “nationalist”-driven acts of terrorism to become an “Ummah”-wide militant jihad against the Pakistani state for its position towards China’s alleged treatment of the Uighurs, which is increasingly being revealed to have been the proper one all along after Beijing’s recent diplomatic and journalistic opening in the province debunked the last year’s worth of fake news about this emotive issue. It’s precisely because it turned out that Pakistan was right all along, and its refusal to fall for this infowar narrative doomed the plans to organize an “Ummah”-wide militant jihad against China, that it’s now being targeted through this desperate Hybrid War scenario.

No one should automatically assume that Business Insider is knowingly acting as an instrument of Hybrid War against Pakistan, and it might just be a coincidence that its news reporter decided to obtain exclusive comments on this topic from an individual representing an organization that Beijing regards as a political front for a UN-designated terrorist group (which she didn’t inform her audience of), but the outlet’s irresponsibly inaccurate portrayal of the country’s relations with China nevertheless advances the aforementioned scenario regardless of its original intent. A globally renowned US-based information platform is openly being used by what many consider to be a terrorist-connected organization to spread its dangerously false innuendo that PM Khan is a hypocrite/infidel/apostate who was paid off by China to remain silent about the supposed plight of fellow Muslims, and that’s extremely alarming.

The Asian Parliamentary Assembly Meeting In Gwadar Was Good News For CPEC

 

By Andrew Korybko
Source

It was a very prudent move for Pakistan to have Gwadar host this year’s Asian Parliamentary Assembly instead of any other of the country’s cities because Islamabad showed off the progress that’s been made thus far on CPEC, encouraged its fellow institutional members to feel like they have a stake in its future success, and opened their eyes to the peaceful state of affairs in Balochistan.

This year’s Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA) just took place in the southwestern Pakistani port city of Gwadar, the terminal point of the Silk Road’s flagship project of CPEC as well as its mainland-maritime pivot, which importantly allowed Islamabad to show off the progress that’s been made thus far on this game-changing initiative. Around 100 parliamentarians from 26 countries such as Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia arrived to participate in the event, which was the first high-profile multilateral one of this level to take place there. The author suggested back in Spring 2017 during a speech at Pakistan’s National Defence University (NDU) that the country prioritize hosting large-scale events in this growing connectivity nexus in order to promote CPEC, proposing at the time that a brand-new function one day be unveiled provisionally called the “Gwadar Gathering” for bringing together a wide array of academic, political, military, business, and civil society figures.

The two-day APA meeting can therefore be seen as an organizational and logistical precursor for preparing Gwadar to host even larger functions in the future such as the unique one that the author suggested. It’s also relevant in and of itself not only for the work that the organization carried out during this time, but because of the soft power goals that Pakistan advanced as well. CPEC recently secured significant Saudi backing during Prime Minister Khan’s visit to the Kingdom in mid-September which was seen as proof of this project being the “Zipper of Eurasia” in at least connecting West Asia with East Asia via Pakistani territory, let alone of its larger potential in ultimately becoming the “Convergence of Civilizations” in Afro-Eurasia. These geo-cultural integrational possibilities could powerfully debunk Huntington’s thesis about the imminence of a so-called “clash of civilizations” if successfully actualized and thus stabilize the emerging Multipolar World Order.

Accordingly, it only makes sense that Acting President Sadiq Sanjrani emphasized the angle of CPEC’s Asian integrational vision and also took the time to talk about Pakistan’s many sacrifices in the War on Terror. This latter part of his remarks drew attention to the peacemaking achievements that were made in the Balochistan region over the past couple of years that enabled Pakistan to guarantee the security of CPEC and therefore make APA’s Gwadar meeting a reality. The intention behind doing all of this was to make the visiting dignitaries feel like their countries have a stake in CPEC’s success, but it also had another motivation to it as well. Showing the foreign parliamentarians the developmental progress that CPEC has made in Gwadar and the entire Balochistan region, as well as Pakistan’s future plans for them, exposed the fake news narrative  that the supposedly “hopeless plight” of the native Baloch has given rise to a “rebellion” as nothing more than a debunked infowar narrative spread by hostile forces.

The fact of the matter is that approximately 100 visiting parliamentarians saw that CPEC is delivering tangible benefits to the people of Balochistan and that the Pakistani state has successfully defeated terrorism there, though the region nevertheless remains in the crosshairs of Hybrid War precisely because of its strategic significance vis-à-vis the “Zipper of Eurasia” concept and its larger “Convergence of Civilizations” one. Having said that, there should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the rare attacks that still occur there every once in a while are due to foreign-backed terrorist infiltrators and not indigenous “rebels”, which former separatist leader Dr. Jumma Baloch proved to the world since switching sides, exposing how India hijacked his people’s struggle, and launching the Overseas Pakistani Baloch Unity organization for rehabilitating his remaining wayward compatriots. As such, it can be said that Gwadar’s hosting of the latest APA meeting was a success because it informed 26 countries’ representatives of CPEC’s grand strategic importance and the peaceful state of affairs of Balochistan.

 

This is What Can be Accomplished During Imran Khan’s Visit to China

By Adam Garrie
Source

Later this week, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan will take his first official visit to China. As Pakistan’s neighbour and most important all-weather ally, the visit is of incomparable importance as Pakistan stands on the verge of fulfilling the next stages of inspiring new projects throughout the country, many of which have been jointly initiated with China. Furthermore, international pressures as well as domestic challenges that have arisen over the last year mean that China is well placed to offer Pakistan the kind of sustainable economic assistance required to rectify problems that previous Pakistani governments failed to address. With this in mind, here are the goals that can be achieved during Imran’s inaugural visit to China:

Securing a loan 

Last week Saudi Arabia gave Pakistan a one year loan of $3 billion with an addition $3 billion offered in the form of deferred payments for oil. The agreement was made on the same day that Imran Khan attended the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh. This itself is demonstrative of the no nonsense approach that Imran takes when dealing with important multilateral issues. Imran Khan’s positive meetings with the Saudi leadership along with his statement that Pakistan is willing to play a role as a mediator in regional conflicts including the war in Yemen, indicates that far from Saudi offering a “sympathy loan” to Islamabad, rapidly emerging geopolitical trends and Pakistan’s own economic development makes Pakistan a crucial partner for Riyadh.

The $10 billion that Saudi Arabia has invested for the purposes of building an oil refinery in the Pakistani port city of Gwadar makes it clear that not only is Gwadar fast becoming one of the most important hubs for global trade but that in integrating Saudi investment into the city that represents the southern terminus of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Saudi Arabia is attempting to utilise the decades of good will between itself and Pakistan in order to become more immersed in the win-win relationship stemming from direct participation in the Belt and Road Initiative.

The IMF has already made it clear that as expected, all of Pakistan’s current internal and bilateral projects will be scrutinised from the overtly American perspective of the IMF’s top officials. As such, Chinese officials are well aware that Washington could use its influence on the IMF to meddle in the progress of multiple CPEC related and other regional Sino-Pakistani projects. This gives China a clear incentive to help its neighbour whose current account deficit has widened due to the economic mismanagement of previous Pakistani governments.

Beyond this, a Chinese investment in Pakistan in the form of a loan should also be described as an investment in China. As China and Pakistan have shared interests in seeing that the full extent of neighbourly cooperation bears the sweetest possible fruits, China requires an economically stable Pakistan in order to realise this win-win goal. Imran Khan’s optimistic spirit and his domestic war on corruption itself mirrors that which Xi Jinping has engaged in for the benefit of the Chinese people. While no nation wants to throw money away, China knows that Pakistan has the potential to be a great economic power and that as such, a loan to Pakistan would represent an effort to help Imran Khan bring his nation back to economic solvency while the unwise practices of his predecessors that were ultimately bad for Pakistan and its partners are now a thing of the past and as such encouraged investor confidence from many quarters. Thus, a Chinese loan to Pakistan should be viewed as an important investment in a mutually sustainable future based on transparency and a neighbourly opposition to all forms of degrading corruption.

Taken in totality, there remains an opportunity for Imran to secure a loan from China which when combined with the existing Saudi loan could help Pakistan to avoid the IMF all together.

Fight fake news about Belt and Road/CPEC together 

Those with an interest in retarding the progress of Belt and Road and CPEC specifically have launched an all out disinformation war about the current healthy state of China-Pakistan relations. This disinfo war itself is part of a wider drive among certain malicious actors to drive a wedge between China and its partners in the Ummah (global Islamic community). It also serves as an outgrowth of America’s zero-sum attitude to Belt and Road that is expressed in non-factual media reports across several journalistic markets.

When Pakistan’s Foreign Minister addressed the United Nations last month, he presented Pakistan as a champion of the multi-national Belt and Road initiative that is sometimes described as merely a Chinese rather than multilateral initiative. In standing beside Xi Jinping, Imran Khan has the opportunity to not just expose the lies but attack the sources of the lies regarding malicious anti-CPEC stories while showing the world that Pakistan and China remain positively jointly committed to win-win relationships that will transform not just Pakistan but multiple Asian and African nations through enhanced connectivity and economic modernisation in the wider Afro-Eurasian space.

A rounded perspective on Xinjiang

Unlike some of Imran Khan’s predecessors, Imran Khan has shown himself to be deeply in touch with the charitable, austere and compassionate roots of Islam. As such, Imran Khan has vowed to revitalise the dream of national father Muhammad Ali Jinnah to transform Pakistan into an Islamic welfare state.

While mostly non-Muslims and non-Chinese continue to write absurd stories about life in the Chinese province of Xinjiang, particularly where the welfare of Muslims residents are concerned, Imran Khan is well placed to dispel this rumour by publicly relating how Chinese and Islamic values are neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive in practical terms.

As Xinjiang province borders Pakistan, there is all the more reason for Imran Khan to express feelings of unity as a means of dispelling attempts to divide the Ummah from its natural Chinese friend and partner.

New economic initiatives

The spirit of Naya Pakistan (new Pakistan) has been felt not only by Pakistanis but by much of the wider world. Chinese officials have already expressed how it is Beijing’s desire to tap into this spirit of forward thinking to work on new mutual projects that will transform the lives of multiple people in both nations, thus offering the Pakistani and Chinese people a future based on sustainable development through deeper and wider cooperative efforts.

While many Pakistanis are squarely focused on the loan that they hope to secure from a partner like China, Imran Khan has been wise in reminding Pakistanis not to be consumed by the negative legacies of the past. While the mistakes of the past must be dealt with, Imran Khan has also encouraged Pakistani’s to dream positive and healthy dreams for themselves and their country. This attitude is similar to the Chinese Dream that is encouraged through the people-centred initiatives detailed in Xi Jinping Thought. Because of this, it is clear that the only thing more constructive than two neighbours dreaming big is dreaming big together.

More cultural exchange 

Prioritising visits by Chinese tourists to Pakistan and Pakistani tourists to China is a vital way to secure the best possible future relations. Additionally, musicians, artists, sportspeople and great minds from both countries ought to present their talents to those on the other side of the border in order to demonstrate that the benefits of a modern win-win partnership have the ability to foster enlightened human development as well as economic and infrastructural development.

A commitment to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation 

Pakistan’s membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation gives the country a seat in an important organisation that can help bring further peace to Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, help to foster peace within Afghanistan and work to fight terrorism across multiple states. Iman Khan’s own views that extremism must be fought through a combination of proactive security measures and the draining of the swamp of economic destitution in which extremism foments is itself not dissimilar from the methods China has used to rid Xinjiang of extremism.

Furthermore, the regional government that PTI first formed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2013 helped to pioneer education and social welfare as means of lifting people out of both poverty and the related trap of extremism simultaneously. As China continues to do the same in Xinjiang in accordance with Chinese characteristics, both countries can share and pool their experiences in fighting extremist threats that continue to dominate issues at the level of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Such an exchange of methodology can help the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to become a more potent force for security in the region.

Conclusion 

Iman Khan’s visit to China will be an important moment where a dignified and forward looking Pakistani leader will be able to make the most out of a decades long all-weather friendship with the most important economic superpower in today’s world. So long as the meeting is guided by the optimistic spirit of Naya Pakistan, both countries will be able to achieve much on a win-win basis.