Category: Thinking About China

The Inextricable Link Between Military Life and Mental Health Issues

Commentary The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), we’re told, is building a military to invade Taiwan by the end of the decade. In recent times, however, this building process has hit a rather sizable stumbling block that could derail its plans of “unification” with its iron-willed neighbor. The South China Morning Post’s Amber Wang recently discussed…


Xi Jinping’s Achilles’ Heel

Commentary When Xi Jinping secured an unprecedented third term as the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) at the 20th National Congress in October last year, people were surprised to find that the Politburo’s Standing Committee comprised of Xi’s yes-men. It seems that Xi has a firm grip on power and that no one…


Apple Kisses Up to China Again

Commentary Apple is doing the splits. The maker of iPhones, MacBooks, and AirPods is moving much of its production outside of China to the United States, India, and Vietnam. Simultaneously, the company is shifting production within China from Taiwanese to Chinese companies. Moves to the West and friendly countries will please Western consumers and governments….


Faltering American Consumers

Commentary Since the recovery from COVID-19 lockdowns began, American households have provided the economy’s driving force. Homebuying and homebuilding boomed, and retail purchases soared in 2021 and early 2022. That picture has changed, however, as rising interest rates have rendered home ownership too expensive for many, and inflation has cut deeply into the buying power…


The Rise of the City of Knife Attacks

Commentary At the turn of 2023, two pieces of news about Hong Kong caught my attention. First, the government-sponsored new year countdown celebration was reportedly watched by three billion worldwide. In contrast to Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, which drew more than four billion views globally, people wonder how an unimpressive countdown of an increasingly Xinjiang-…


The Chinese Military: Built With American Help

Commentary A former U.S. Marine fighter pilot is awaiting extradition from Australia to the United States. He’s charged with helping the Chinese military learn naval flight operations from 2009–2012. It’s against the law to export such defense know-how without a license. If the charges are true, he really shouldn’t have done this, for example, helping…


Challenging Your Worldviews

Commentary Most Americans seem unaware of the ongoing information warfare being carried out against their collective best interests. We are bombarded continuously with politically motivated messaging about every important issue of the day: Ukraine virtue-signaling, LGBTQI activism, those evil election “deniers,” mRNA jabs über alles, critical race theory brainwashing, Trump criminality, etc. All media winds…


As the World Runs Out of Sand, Chinese ‘Pirates’ Profit, Plunder, and Pillage

Commentary Life is a beach, they say, and we’re all just playing in the sand. Soon, though, there might not be any sand left. That’s because the world is running out of it. Running out of sand, you ask, how can that be? After all, 33 percent of Earth is covered in desert, and many…


The AI Threat to America and Democracy

Commentary The United States and the world are on the cusp of history’s greatest threat to not only democracy, but to the human agency itself. The dangers now overlap and interact in multiplicative and complexifying ways, including not only the concentration of power in illiberal regimes like China and Russia, but the ability of those…


China’s Deadly Lies About COVID

Commentary The only thing not going viral in China is the truth. Chinese officials are spewing lies to cover up the massive COVID outbreak there. Worse, U.S. public health officials dawdled for a week, allowing air travelers from China in without testing, while other countries immediately blocked infected travelers from entering. Aerial photos and videos…