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China denies nuclear testing, calls on US to maintain moratorium

US president claims China, Russia have carried out secret nuclear weapon tests as he seeks to justify return to testing.

Aljazeera, By Adam Hancock and News Agencies, 3 Nov 2025

China has denied it has been secretly testing nuclear weapons, refuting a claim from United States President Donald Trump.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning insisted on Monday that Beijing has not broken the informal moratorium that has persisted for decades on the testing of nuclear arms.

Trump claimed on Sunday that, as well as China, Russia, North Korea and Pakistan are all engaged in secret underground testing. He made the comments as he pushes for the US to resume tests.

China has “abided by its commitment to suspend nuclear testing”, Mao said in response to questions regarding Trump’s allegation.

“As a responsible nuclear-weapon state, China is committed to peaceful development, follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and a nuclear strategy that focuses on self-defence, and adheres to its nuclear testing moratorium,” she said.

She also said that Beijing calls on the US to uphold the moratorium on nuclear testing, following Trump’s surprise announcement on Thursday that he had ordered the Department of Defense to “immediately” resume tests.

China hopes the US will “take concrete actions to safeguard the international nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime and maintain global strategic balance and stability”, Mao continued.

‘The only country that doesn’t test’

Trump made the claims about secret nuclear tests, without offering evidence, in a television interview with CBS.

“Russia’s testing, and China’s testing, but they don’t talk about it,” he said.

“I don’t want to be the only country that doesn’t test,” he continued, adding North Korea and Pakistan to the list of nations allegedly testing arsenals.

The US has not set off a nuclear explosion since 1992. No country other than North Korea is known to have conducted a nuclear detonation for decades. Russia and China report they have not carried out such tests since 1990 and 1996, respectively…………………..https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/11/3/china-denies-nuclear-testing-calls-on-us-to-maintain-moratorium

November 5, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international | Leave a comment

Donald Trump’s nuclear testing order sparks pushback from Russia, China and the UN.

SBS World News, 31 Oct 25

Trump said the Pentagon will immediately resume testing the US nuclear arsenal on an “equal basis” with other nuclear powers.

United States President Donald Trump has landed back in the US after a surprise directive to begin nuclear weapons testing that has raised the spectre of renewed superpower tensions.

Trump announced the order on social media, just as he was entering a summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in South Korea on Thursday.

It came days after Russia declared it had tested nuclear-capable, nuclear-powered cruise missiles and sea drones.

The blunt statement from Trump, who boasts frequently about being a “peace” president, left much unanswered.

Chiefly, it was unclear whether he meant testing weapons systems or actually conducting test explosions — something the US has not done since 1992.

“Because of other countries’ testing programs, I have instructed the Department of War to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump also said that the US has more nuclear weapons than any other country and that he had achieved this in his first term as president.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said in its latest annual report that Russia possesses 5,489 nuclear warheads, compared to 5,177 for the United States and 600 for China.

In his post, Trump said — minutes ahead of his meeting with Xi — that China was expected to “be even within 5 years”, without substantiating the claim.

China, Russia express concerns

In response to Trump’s announcement, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun urged the US to “earnestly abide” by a global nuclear testing ban.

Russia questioned whether Trump was well-informed about its activities.

“President Trump mentioned in his statement that other countries are engaged in testing nuclear weapons. Until now, we didn’t know that anyone was testing,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Russia’s recent weapons drills “cannot in any way be interpreted as a nuclear test”, Peskov said. “We hope that the information was conveyed correctly to President Trump.”

Peskov then implied that Russia would conduct its own live warhead tests if Trump did it first.

“If someone departs from the moratorium, Russia will act accordingly,” Peskov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if any country tests a nuclear weapon, then Russia will do so too.

Both countries observe a de facto moratorium on testing nuclear warheads, though Russia and the United States do regularly run military drills involving nuclear-capable systems.

The US has been a signatory since 1996 to the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which bans all atomic test explosions, whether for military or civilian purposes.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres said through his deputy spokesman that “nuclear testing can never be permitted under any circumstances”………………………………………… https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/trump-nuclear-testing-order-pushback/a21zghnl1

November 1, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Stabilizing the U.S.-China Rivalry.

RAND think tank, famous for its influential policy papers which have shaped US-Russian relations, has released an eye-opening call for a change of course on China. This comes by way of the latest Trump-China escalations which, it appears, have greatly worried insiders of the ‘deep state’ system; enough so that for once they have begun swallowing their pride and envisioning a calmer, more placating approach toward China so as not to upset the global status quo too much.

Michael J. Mazarr, Amanda Kerrigan, Benjamin Lenain, Oct 14, 2025, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4107-1.html?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The geopolitical rivalry between the United States and China embodies risks of outright military conflict, economic warfare, and political subversion, as well as the danger that tensions between the world’s two leading powers will destroy the potential for achieving a global consensus on such issues as climate and artificial intelligence. Moderating this rivalry therefore emerges as a critical goal, both for the United States and China and for the wider world.

The authors of this report propose that, even in the context of intense competition, it might be possible to find limited mechanisms of stabilization across several specific issue areas. They offer specific recommendations both for general stabilization of the rivalry and for three issue areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology.

Key Findings

Several broad principles can guide efforts to stabilize intense rivalries

  • Each side accepts that some degree of modus vivendi must necessarily be part of the relationship.
  • Each side accepts the essential political legitimacy of the other.
  • In specific issue areas, especially those disputed by the two sides, each side works to develop sets of shared rules, norms, institutions, and other tools that create lasting conditions of a stable modus vivendi within that domain over a specific period (such as three to five years).
  • Each side practices restraint in the development of capabilities explicitly designed to undermine the deterrent and defensive capabilities of the other in ways that would create an existential risk to its homeland.

  • Each side accepts some essential list of characteristics of a shared vision of organizing principles for world politics that can provide at least a baseline for an agreed status quo.
  • There are mechanisms and institutions in place — from long-term personal ties to physical communication links to agreed norms and rules of engagement for crises and risky situations — that help provide a moderating or return-to-stable-equilibrium function.

Recommendations

Six broad-based initiatives can help moderate the intensity of the U.S.-China rivalry

  • Clarify U.S. objectives in the rivalry with language that explicitly rejects absolute versions of victory and accepts the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party.
  • Reestablish several trusted lines of communication between senior officials.
  • Improve crisis-management practices, links, and agreements between the two sides.
  • Seek specific new agreements — a combination of formal public accords and private understandings — to limit the U.S.-China cyber competition.

  • Declare mutual acceptance of strategic nuclear deterrence and a willingness to forswear technologies and doctrines that would place the other side’s nuclear deterrent at risk.
  • Seek modest cooperative ventures on issues of shared interest or humanitarian concern.

More-specific strategies should guide efforts to stabilize the issues of Taiwan, the South China Sea, and competition in science and technology

  • Stabilizing the Taiwan issue should focus on creating the maximum incentive for Beijing to pursue gradual approaches toward unification.
  • For the South China Sea, combine deterrence of military escalation with intensified multilateral and bilateral diplomacy to create a medium-term route to a peaceful solution as the default international process and expectation.
  • In the U.S.-China science and technology rivalry, manage the worst aspects of emerging technologies for mutual security and the condition of the rivalry, and step back from the most extreme versions of efforts to undermine the other side’s progress.

October 26, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

Quake less alarming than tsunami threat to China’s coastal nuclear power plants

REACTORS: A tremor yesterday posed minimal danger to Kinmen, but a greater risk would come from tsunamis striking Chinese coastal nuclear plants, an expert said

Taipei Times, By Wu Liang-yi and Jake Chung / Staff reporter, with staff writer, 21 Sept 25, https://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2025/09/21/2003844164

Taiwan’s nuclear engineers and the Central Weather Administration (CWA) yesterday said that an earthquake near Kinmen County was less concerning than the potential risk posed by earthquake-triggered tsunamis striking nuclear power plants along China’s coast.

A magnitude 5.0 quake on the Richter scale, the strongest recorded in the Kinmen region in 32 years, struck at 6:56am yesterday.

The CWA said its epicenter was in the Taiwan Strait, about 93.9km east of Kinmen County Hall, at a depth of 17.2km.

Nuclear engineer Ho Li-wei (賀立維) said that while nuclear power plants are designed to withstand strong earthquakes, their cooling systems are more vulnerable.

Ho cited the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, where the plant’s cooling system was damaged by a tsunami triggered by the Tohoku earthquake, ultimately leading to hydrogen explosions that destabilized the facility.

If the same happened to Chinese coastal nuclear power plants, irradiated water could seep into underground aquifers or be carried into the sea, posing a devastating threat to Taiwan’s fisheries, he said.

Kinmen and Lienchiang counties would face particular risk due to their proximity to China, he said.

On the issue of spent fuel pools, Ho said that used fuel rods are stored in pools to dissipate heat and radiation, often requiring years of cooling before they can be transferred to dry storage.

The number of spent fuel rods in pools far exceeds those in active reactors, making them a significant security risk, he said.

CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) said that the Kinmen earthquake was not on a fault line and carried little risk of causing a major quake.

Tsunami-generating earthquakes must reach at least magnitude 7 on the Richter scale and occur at depths of less than 30km, Wu said, adding that the likelihood of such conditions arising in the Taiwan Strait is not high.

While the Strait’s shallow waters make it theoretically vulnerable to tsunamis, Wu said that even waves generated by distant quakes would be greatly diminished by the time they reached the area.

Additional reporting by CNA

September 22, 2025 Posted by | China, safety | Leave a comment

Can the US, Russia and China break their nuclear talks impasse?

With a key US-Russia arms treaty due to expire in February, the world is at risk of entering a new era of strategic instability, analysts warn.

Shi Jiangtao, SCMP, 21 Sep 2025

US President Donald Trump’s summit in Alaska last month with Russian leader Vladimir Putin failed to revive long-stalled nuclear negotiations or advance efforts to preserve the last major arms control pact between Washington and Moscow, which is set to expire in February.

Trump’s subsequent push for trilateral “denuclearisation” talks involving China elicited a firm refusal from Beijing, underscoring challenges to extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) amid fears of a fresh nuclear arms race, analysts said.

Following the summit, Beijing, with its long-standing policy of “no first use” and a nuclear strategy rooted in self defence, spurned Trump’s proposal, with Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun calling it “neither reasonable nor realistic”…………………………(Subscribers only) https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3326243/can-us-russia-and-china-break-their-nuclear-talks-impasse?module=perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article

September 22, 2025 Posted by | China, politics international, Russia, USA | Leave a comment

Chinese hackers gain access to US oversight of nuclear weapons in widespread Microsoft hack: report

The tech giant blamed a vulnerability in its SharePoint document software

Anthony Cuthbertson,Rhian Lubin, Wednesday 23 July 2025, https://www.the-independent.com/tech/security/china-hack-nuclear-microsoft-sharepoint-b2795333.html

Chinese hackers gained access to the U.S. government agency that oversees nuclear weapons in a widespread Microsoft hack.

Microsoft issued an alert Tuesday warning that hackers affiliated with the Chinese government have been exploiting cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the company’s SharePoint software.

Tens of thousands of servers hosting the software, which is used for sharing and managing documents, were said to be at risk as a result.

The National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the U.S. Department of Energy responsible for maintaining the nation’s stockpile of nuclear weapons, was breached in the attacks on July 18, Bloomberg first reported.

The agency is responsible for providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines and responds to nuclear and radiological emergencies in the U.S. and overseas. No sensitive or classified information has leaked in the cyber attack, according to Bloomberg.

“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy,” an agency spokesman said in a statement to the outlet. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”

Security firm Eye Security said that 400 organizations and agencies globally were impacted, including national governments in Europe and the Middle East.

Microsoft linked the attack to two main groups, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, and flagged that another China-based group, Storm-2603, had also targeted its systems.

The Education Department, Florida’s Department of Revenue and the Rhode Island General Assembly were also breached in the attack, according to Bloomberg.

Eye Security warned that the breaches could allow hackers to impersonate users or services by stealing cryptographic keys — alphabetical codes or sequences of characters — even after software updates. Users should take further steps to protect their information, the firm said.

Microsoft said in a message to customers that it has since released “new comprehensive security updates” to deal with the incident.

But security researchers warned that the full extent of the breach and its consequences are yet to be fully revealed.

“This is a critical vulnerability with wide reaching implications,” Carlos Perez, director of security intelligence at TrustedSec, who previously trained U.S. military cyber protection teams, told The Independent.

“It enables unauthenticated remote code execution on SharePoint servers, which are a core part of enterprise infrastructure. It is already being actively exploited at scale, and it only took 72 hours from the time a proof of concept was demonstrated for attackers to begin mass exploitation campaigns.

“What makes it even more severe is the way it exposes cryptographic secrets, effectively allowing attackers to convert any authenticated SharePoint request into remote code execution. That is a dangerous capability to put into the hands of threat actors.”


Microsoft said it had “high confidence” that firms who do not install the new security updates could be targeted by the groups.

The tech firm said the attackers had been uploading malicious scripts which are then “enabling the theft of the key material” by hackers.

In a statement, the company added: “Investigations into other actors also using these exploits are still ongoing.”

Additional reporting from agencies.

July 27, 2025 Posted by | China, incidents, USA | Leave a comment

Poisoned water and scarred hills

The price of the rare earth metals the world buys from China

By Laura Bicker and the Visual Journalism team: 08/07/2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-66cdf862-5e96-4e6e-90b8-a407b597c8d9

When you stand on the edge of Bayan Obo, all you see is an expanse of scarred grey earth carved into the grasslands of Inner Mongolia in northern China.

Dark dust clouds rise from deep craters where the earth’s crust has been sliced away over decades in search of a modern treasure.

You may not have heard of this town – but life as we know it could grind to a halt without Bayan Obo.

The town gets its name from the district it sits in, which is home to half of the world’s supply of a group of metals known as rare earths. They are key components in nearly everything that we switch on: smartphones, bluetooth speakers, computers, TV screens, even electric vehicles.

And one country, above all others, has leapt ahead in mining them and refining them: China.

This dominance gives Beijing huge leverage – both economically, and politically, such as when it negotiates with US President Donald Trump over tariffs. But China has paid a steep price for it.

To find out more, we travelled to the country’s two main rare earth mining hubs – Bayan Obo in the north and Ganzhou in the province of Jiangxi in the south.

We found man-made lakes full of radioactive sludge and heard claims of polluted water and contaminated soil, which, in the past, have been linked to clusters of cancer and birth defects. These journeys were challenging.

Beijing appears sensitive to criticism of its environmental record. We were pulled over by police, questioned by them and stuck in a three-hour standoff with an unidentified mining boss who refused to let us leave unless we deleted our footage.

Our calls for an interview or a statement have gone unanswered, but the government has published new regulations to try to strengthen its supervision of the industry.

Authorities have been making an effort to clean up these mining sites, scientists told the BBC. Still, China’s mining operations in the north just keep growing.

Machines are constantly on the hunt for rare earths called neodymium and dysprosium that go into making powerful magnets for a variety of modern technology, from electric vehicles to computer hard drives.

To find these rare earths, the machines strip away the topsoil layer-by-layer, kicking up harmful dust, some of which contains high levels of heavy metals and radioactive material.

Satellite images from the last few decades show how the Bayan Obo mine has spread.

The mine sits in the vast, aridness of Inner Mongolia, a nine-hour drive from the capital, Beijing.

There were once more than a thousand mining sites, some of them illegal, dotted throughout this one county. Companies got what they needed from one mine, and then moved to another.

Then in 2012, the Chinese government stepped in to regulate, dramatically reducing the number of mining licences they issued.

But significant damage had been done to the area already. Research going back decades has linked the rare earth mines to deforestation, soil erosion and chemical leaks into rivers and farmland.

Local farmer Huang Xiaocong, whose land is surrounded by four rare earth sites, believes landslides are still being triggered by improper mining practices.

He has also accused the state-owned company of grabbing land illegally. The firm refused to answer the BBC’s questions.

“This problem is way too big for me to solve. It’s something that has to be dealt with at the higher levels of government,” Mr Huang said.

“We ordinary people don’t have the answers… Farmers like us, we’re the vulnerable ones. To put it simply, we were born at a disadvantage. It’s pretty tragic.”

It is rare and often risky in China for villagers to take on huge companies – and even rarer for them to speak to international media. But Mr Huang is determined to be heard and has taken his case to the local Natural Resources Bureau.

Satellite images show the mining ponds surrounding Mr Huang’s village and land. Within a six kilometres wide square, at least four sites are visible.

During our interview with Mr Huang, we were surrounded by men wearing uniforms branded with what appeared to be the logo of the same rare earth company. At least 12 other men used their vehicles to block our car from leaving.

Eventually, someone who identified himself as a local manager of China Rare Earth Jiangxi Company arrived. He confronted Mr Huang and us, and wouldn’t let us leave for nearly three hours, despite our attempts to negotiate and our offers to hear his argument.

Those living around the mines in Bayan Obo and Ganzhou appear to be victims of what used to be China’s “develop first and clean up later” approach to mining, says Professor Julie Klinger, author of Rare Earth Frontiers. That has changed now as they try harder to mitigate the damage, she adds, but the consequences are here to stay.

“I think it’s very difficult to know the true human and environmental cost of that sort of development model,” she told the BBC.

The worst health effects were found in and around the largest tailing pond south of Bayan Obo in the city of Baotou. In the decades leading up to 2010, villagers were diagnosed with bone and joint deformities caused by too much fluoride in the water and acute arsenic toxicity, according to Professor Klinger.

Most of them lived close to the Weikuang Dam, a man-made lake built to dump mining waste in the 1950s. Authorities have since moved villagers away from the site, but the 11km-long tailings pond is still full of grey clay sludge, including radioactive thorium.

Studies suggest this toxic mix could be slowly seeping into the groundwater and moving towards the Yellow River, China’s second-largest, and a key source of drinking water for the north of the country.

As the demand for pocket gadgets, electric vehicles, solar panels, MRI machines and jet engines surges, there is one worrying statistic to contend with – mining just one tonne of rare earth minerals creates some 2,000 tonnes of toxic waste.

China is now trying to rein in the environmental harm its rush for rare earths has caused, while expanding its mining operations abroad. Others, including the United States, are in a hurry to catch up with their own rare earth enterprises.

But scientists warn that no matter where these metals are mined, without the right solutions, landscapes and lives will be put at risk.

And yet, some farmers in Bayan Obo have adjusted to life in the the world’s rare earth capital.

The metals that have scarred their land and poisoned their water have also brought them jobs.

“With the rare earths, there’s money now,” one farmer told us. “The mines pay 5,000 or 6,000 yuan ($837; £615) a month.”

He says he lost money herding horses, among the traditional livelihoods in a region that has long been home to nomadic people. Horses still roam the pastures next to the mines, as diggers continue their search for more rare earths.

“Farming’s fine,” he told us as he planted green onions. “You just grow your crop and sell it – simple as that.”

July 17, 2025 Posted by | China, environment, RARE EARTHS | Leave a comment

China backs Southeast Asia nuclear ban; Rubio, Lavrov at ASEAN meeting

US President Trump’s tariffs loom over gathering in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur which will also feature US-Russia talks.

Aljazeera, 10 Jul 2025

China has agreed to sign a Southeast Asian treaty banning nuclear weapons, Malaysia’s and China’s foreign ministers confirmed, in a move that seeks to shield the area from rising global security tensions amid the threat of imminent United States tariffs.

The pledge from Beijing was welcomed as diplomats on Thursday gathered for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also due to meet regional counterparts and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.

Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan told reporters China had confirmed its willingness to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty – an agreement in force since 1997 that restricts nuclear activity in the region to peaceful purposes such as energy generation.

“China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation,” Hasan said, adding that the formal signing will take place once all relevant documentation is completed.

ASEAN has long pushed for the world’s five recognised nuclear powers – China, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – to sign the pact and respect the region’s non-nuclear status, including within its exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.

Last week, Beijing signalled its readiness to support the treaty and lead by example among nuclear-armed states.

Rubio, who is on his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid a cloud of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, which includes new levies on six ASEAN nations as well as key traditional allies Japan and South Korea……………………………………………………………….

………………………..Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride says Southeast Asian nations are finding themselves at the centre of intensifying diplomatic competition, as global powers look to strengthen their influence in the region.

“The ASEAN countries are facing some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration,” McBride said. “They were also among the first to receive new letters announcing yet another delay in the imposition of these tariffs, now pushed to 1 August.”

The uncertainty has pushed ASEAN states to seek alternative trade partners, most notably China. “These tariffs have provided an impetus for all of these ASEAN nations to seek out closer trade links with other parts of the world,” McBride added.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been in Kuala Lumpur for meetings with ASEAN counterparts, underscoring Beijing’s growing engagement.

Meanwhile, Russia’s top diplomat, Sergey Lavrov, has also been holding talks in Malaysia, advancing Moscow’s vision of a “multipolar world order” – a concept backed by China that challenges what they see as a Western-led global system dominated by the US………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/10/china-backs-southeast-asia-nuclear-ban-rubio-lavrov-at-asean-meeting

July 14, 2025 Posted by | China, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China lifts a nearly 2-year ban on seafood from Japan over Fukushima wastewater

 China has reopened its market to seafood from Japan after a nearly
two-year ban over the discharge of slightly radioactive wastewater from the
tsunami-destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant. A notice from the customs
agency said the ban had been lifted Sunday and that imports from most of
Japan would be resumed. The ban, imposed in August 2023, was a major blow
to Japan’s fisheries industry. China was the biggest overseas market for
Japanese seafood, accounting for more than one-fifth of its exports.

 Daily Mail 30th June 2025, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-14859601/China-lifts-nearly-2-year-ban-seafood-Japan-Fukushima-wastewater.html

July 1, 2025 Posted by | business and costs, China, Japan | Leave a comment

‘We Are Preparing for War’ With China ‘Threat’, Says US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.

By Ben Norton, 5 June 25, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/06/06/preparing-war-china-threat-us-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth/

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered an extremely hawkish speech in which he demonized China as a “threat” and said, “We are preparing for war”.

“Those who long for peace, must prepare for war. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. We are preparing for war, in order to deter war — to achieve peace through strength”, Hegseth stated.

The top Donald Trump administration official made these aggressive remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025, a summit held in Singapore on 31 May.

“The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent. We hope not, but it certainly could be”, Hegseth claimed, indicating that the Pentagon was preparing for a war over Taiwan.

“Beyond our borders and beyond our neighborhood, we are reorienting toward deterring aggression by Communist China”, he stressed.

The message of Trump’s Pentagon: war is peace

The Trump administration’s Pentagon has essentially pushed the message “war is peace”.

Hegseth has incessantly reiterated the slogan “peace through strength”.

“President Trump said it himself [in May] in Riyadh – and will never hesitate to wield American power swiftly and decisively if necessary. That is re-establishing deterrence”, the defense secretary emphasized in Singapore.

Hegseth is a war hawk and a religious fundamentalist. He made his name as a former host on the conservative TV network Fox News, where Trump discovered him.

In 2020, Hegseth published a book called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly identified as a “crusader” and wrote that the US right wing is waging a “holy war” against China, the international left, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, he promised in the extremist book.

Trump admin pressures Asia-Pacific countries to minimize “economic cooperation with China”

In his speech in Singapore in May 2025, Pete Hegseth noted that it was his second time in his four months serving as secretary of defense that he had visited the Asia-Pacific region (which Washington has sought to rebrand as the “Indo-Pacific”).

In March, Hegseth traveled to Japan and the Philippines, where he threatened China and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

At the Shangri-La Dialogue conference, Hegseth half-jokingly threatened the Asia-Pacific region with his endless presence……………………………..

The Trump administration essentially told countries that they must choose between either the United States or China — that they can’t have good relations with both sides, because a war could be coming soon.

Hegseth said (emphasis added):

Facing these threats, we know that many countries are tempted by the idea of seeking both economic cooperation with China and defense cooperation with the United States. Now that is a geographic necessity for many. But beware the leverage that the CCP seeks with that entanglement. Economic dependence on China only deepens their malign influence and complicates our defense decision space during times of tension.

China opposes hegemony, while the US empire seeks it

Defense Secretary Hegseth claimed in his May speech in Singapore that, supposedly, “China seeks to become a hegemonic power in Asia. No doubt”.

This is false. China has consistently emphasized, over decades, that it does not seek hegemony. In fact, Beijing does not want any country to have hegemony.

Principled opposition to hegemony has been a constant since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) under Mao Zedong in 1949, through the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, and into the New Era launched by President Xi Jinping in 2012.

The Chinese government has always stressed what it calls its “unequivocal commitment to supporting other developing countries in their efforts to defend national sovereignty, develop national economy and fight imperialism, colonialism, and hegemonism”.

In a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in 1974, Deng Xiaoping stated, “If one day China should change her color and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression, and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism, expose it, oppose it, and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it”.

In fact, when the PRC normalized diplomatic relations with the United States and Japan in the 1970s, a source of diplomatic tension was China’s insistence that, in the joint statements signed by Beijing and Washington and Beijing and Tokyo, there had to be an “anti-hegemony” clause.

It is actually the United States that has consistently sought to impose its hegemony on the rest of the world.

This was spelled out clearly in a 1992 document published by the US Department of Defense, known as the Wolfowitz Doctrine (because it was co-written by Paul Wolfowitz, who then served as US under secretary of defense for policy, before later returning as secretary of defense under George W. Bush).

The Pentagon’s Wolfowitz Doctrine stated (emphasis added):

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power. These regions include Western Europe, East Asia, the territory of the former Soviet Union, and Southwest Asia.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy is still consistent with much of the Wolfowitz Doctrine. Although Trump has de-prioritized Western Europe and the territory of the former USSR, he has dedicated significant resources to US military operations in East Asia and Southwest Asia (also known as the Middle East).

In fact, the main theme of Hegseth’s speech was that the Pentagon will not accept China challenging US dominance in the Asia-Pacific region.

“We will not be pushed out of this critical region”, Hegseth said, in a clear message to Beijing.

This was the US empire stating clearly that it seeks to impose its hegemonic control over East Asia.

Bipartisan warmongering in Washington

This aggressive anti-China stance is bipartisan in Washington.

A former top Joe Biden administration official said he agreed with the thrust of the anti-China policy pursued by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing extremist and religious fanatic.

Ely Ratner, who served as the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs in Biden’s Pentagon, wrote approvingly on Twitter/X, “Rhetoric aside, on actual defense policy Secretary Hegseth’s speech was near total continuity with the previous administration”.

“That’s good, but we’ll need heightened urgency, attention, and resources to address the China challenge”, Ratner added.

Biden’s neoconservative Secretary of State Antony Blinken had also maintained a hardline anti-China position.

In a speech in 2022, Blinken announced what was essentially a containment policy targeting China.

“We cannot rely on Beijing to change its trajectory. So we will shape the strategic environment around Beijing”, he said.

Blinken added, “The scale and the scope of the challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China will test American diplomacy like nothing we’ve seen before”.

June 13, 2025 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China unveils world’s first AI nuke inspector

China creates artificial intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns it could leak tech secrets

 China creates artificial
intelligence system to oversee nuclear warhead detection despite concerns
it could leak tech secrets. Chinese scientists have developed an artificial
intelligence system that can distinguish real nuclear warheads from decoys,
marking the world’s first AI-driven solution for arms control
verification. The technology, disclosed in a peer-reviewed paper published
in April by researchers with the China Institute of Atomic Energy (CIAE),
could bolster Beijing’s stance in stalled international disarmament talks
while fuelling debate on the role of AI in managing weapons of mass
destruction.

 South China Morning Post 30th May 2025, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3312270/china-unveils-worlds-first-ai-nuke-inspector

June 2, 2025 Posted by | China, technology | Leave a comment

China and Russia plan to build nuclear power station on moon

 China and Russia plan to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2035 to
power a permanent lunar base. The International Lunar Research Station
(ILRS) will rely on the power plant for its scientific research. The IRLS
involves over a dozen international partners and is seen as a rival program
to NASA’s Artemis Program.

 Deutsche Welle 16th May 2025, https://www.dw.com/en/china-and-russia-plan-to-build-nuclear-power-station-on-moon/a-72565465

May 19, 2025 Posted by | China, Russia, space travel | Leave a comment

As US military prepares for war on China, Silicon Valley tech oligarchs are profiting

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

The US military is preparing for war on China. It has missile systems in the Philippines aimed at major Chinese cities. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the USA is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”. Silicon Valley Big Tech oligarchs are making hugely profitable investments.

By Ben Norton, https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2025/04/28/us-military-war-china-silicon-valley/

Evidence grows showing that the US military is setting the stage for war on China.

A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post reveals that the US Department of Defense has made preparing for war with China into its top priority, giving it precedence over all other issues.

The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert US control over Taiwan.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a fundamentalist self-declared “crusader” who called for overthrowing the Chinese government, took a trip in March to Japan and the Philippines, where he repeatedly threatened Beijing and boasted of US “war-fighting” preparations and “real war plans”.

In 2024, the US military installed its Typhon missile system in the northern Philippines. This has a range of 1,240 miles (roughly 2,000 kilometers), and can hit most major cities on the Chinese mainland.

The United States has access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines.

The Wall Street Journal reported that this “new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance”.

The newspaper added that it “is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders”.

This blatant US provocation has caused outrage in Beijing, which sees the Pentagon’s move as a significant escalation of Washington’s new cold war on China.

Cold War Two

Cold War Two has more and more parallels to Cold War One.

Students in US schools are often taught that the Soviet Union’s deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis was an act of “aggression”. Their classes usually omit the fact the United States first put nuclear weapons in NATO member Turkey in 1959, provoking Moscow.

Today, Washington is provoking Beijing in many domains.

Donald Trump launched a unilateral, aggressive trade war on China in 2018, during his first term.

Trump’s Democratic successor, Joe Biden, not only continued this trade war but expanded it further, adding more tariffs and export restrictions in an attempt to strangle China’s high-tech sector.

Now in his second term, Trump has waged a nuclear trade war on China, threatening tariffs of 245%.

This new cold war has become a lucrative enterprise for some US oligarchs.

Silicon Valley oligarchs hope to profit from US war on China

Big Tech capitalists in Silicon Valley have poured money into new weapons systems, hoping to profit off of war on China.

The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2024 titled “Tech Bros Are Betting They Can Help Win a War With China”. It featured an interview with right-wing billionaire Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive who founded the arms manufacturer Anduril Industries.

Anduril has established itself as a significant Pentagon contractor, with its work developing advanced autonomous weapons.

The Wall Street Journal wrote (emphasis added):

These weapons, Luckey argues, are needed for a potential conflict with China, which the Pentagon two years ago announced is the greatest danger to U.S. security. The U.S. military, Luckey and others say, needs large numbers of cheaper and more intelligent systems that can be effective over long stretches of ocean and against a manufacturing and technological power like China.

Anduril is so focused on a conflict with Beijing, Luckey says, that many teams inside the company are building only weapons that can be completed by 2027—the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has said his country should be prepared to invade Taiwan. The fictional sword for which Anduril is named [from the Lord of the Rings] is also called the “Flame of the West.”

“We keep our eyes on the prize, which is great-power conflict in the Pacific,” Luckey said.

The newspaper highlighted how the US military-industrial complex has become increasingly privatized.

There has been a rapid influx of venture capital funds into weapons corporations in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reported (emphasis added):

Anduril is part of one of the largest shifts to take place in the defense sector since World War II: the flow of venture-capital funding into defense-technology companies.

For decades, the U.S. government funded defense companies, like Lockheed Martin, to develop new weapons, ranging from stealth aircraft to spy satellites. But as the private-sector money available for research and development has outstripped federal-government spending, particularly in areas like AI, a new cohort of defense startups is using private capital to develop technology for the Pentagon.

The amount of private capital flowing into the venture-backed defense-tech industry has ballooned, with investors spending at least 70% more on the sector each of the past three years than any prior year. From 2021 through mid-June 2024, venture capitalists invested a total of $130 billion in defense-tech startups, according to data firm PitchBook. The Pentagon spends about $90 billion on R&D annually.

A major investor in Anduril is Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.

Thiel is a far-right billionaire oligarch who has strongly supported Donald Trump and has funded Republican politicians. He even previously employed US Vice President JD Vance, and bankrolled his successful 2022 Senate campaign.

A former FBI informant, Thiel co-founded another major Pentagon contractor, Palantir, which the CIA helped to fund.

Thiel is also an extreme anti-China hawk. He openly defends monopolies, arguing “competition is for losers”, and wants to ban Chinese competitors to US Big Tech monopolies.

Like Thiel, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is staunchly pro-Trump. He is from the same community of far-right Silicon Valley oligarchs.

The Financial Times reported that Thiel’s Palantir, Luckey’s Anduril, and Elon Musk’s SpaceX sought to create a “consortium” — or, rather, a cartel — to jointly bid for US government contractors.

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wages “holy war” on China, from Japan and the Philippines

Trump has surrounded himself with a team of war hawks, including neoconservative Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

Hegseth personally signed the Pentagon document obtained by the Washington Post that showed that the number one priority of the US military is preparing for war with China over Taiwan.

In this memo, which is officially known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance”, the Pentagon wrote, “China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario”.

The Washington Post revealed that several parts of this document were copied word-for-word from a vehemently anti-China report published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, DC-based think tank that is funded by large corporations and conservative billionaires.

The oligarch-backed Heritage Foundation organized the notorious Project 2025, which crafted a detailed policy program for the Trump administration to implement.

Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called “American Crusade”, in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a “holy war” against the international left, China, and Islam.

“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, Hegseth pledged in the book. He wrote, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.

In March 2025, Hegseth traveled to Asia to pressure US allies to join Washington in its new cold war on China. The Wall Street Journal summarized his trip with the headline “Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China”.

When he spoke in Japan, Hegseth vowed to “strengthen our bilateral bonds and deepen our operational cooperation” against Beijing.

The US defense secretary stated that the Pentagon is turning “Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”.

Japan previously colonized China. The Japanese empire, which later allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, killed tens of millions of people in China and other parts of Asia in the 1930s and ’40s.

“America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the Communist Chinese”, Hegseth asserted, fearmongering about “the severe nature of the threat”.

“Those who long for peace must prepare for war”, the US defense secretary said. “We must be prepared. We look forward to working closely together as we improve our war-fighting capabilities, our lethality, and our readiness”.

Hegseth articulated “three pillars” of the Trump administration’s Pentagon strategy: “Reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and restoring deterrence”.

The US defense secretary made similarly aggressive comments in the Philippines, blasting what he called “communist China’s aggression in the region”.

Hegseth revealed that the US military is making “real war plans” for China, over Taiwan.

At a press conference in the Philippines, Hegseth spoke of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command. He said (emphasis added):

It’s not my job to determine where the Seventh Fleet goes. I defer to Admiral Paparo and his war plans. Real war plans. Admiral Paparo understands the situation, understands the geographic significance, understands the urgency, and is prepared to work with those in the region to ensure we are leaning forward in our posture. Not waiting for events to develop, not retrograding to places further from the front, but deploying capabilities forward, posturing and creating dynamics and strategic dilemmas for the Communist Chinese, that help them reconsider whether or not violence or action is something they want to undertake.

During the first cold war, the US hosted a military base on Taiwan, where it stored nuclear weapons.

In the second Taiwan Strait crisis in 1958, top US military officials wanted to attack the Chinese mainland with nuclear bombs, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower preferred conventional weapons.

May 1, 2025 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

China, Russia may build nuclear plant on moon to power lunar station, official says

 China is considering building a nuclear plant on the moon to power the
International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) it is planning with Russia, a
presentation by a senior official showed on Wednesday. China aims to become
a major space power and land astronauts on the moon by 2030, and its
planned Chang’e-8 mission for 2028 would lay the groundwork for
constructing a permanent, manned lunar base.

 Reuters 23rd April 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-led-lunar-base-include-nuclear-power-plant-moons-surface-space-official-2025-04-23/

April 25, 2025 Posted by | China, space travel | Leave a comment

Hegseth Orders Pentagon To Focus on Preparing for War With China Over Taiwan

In an internal memo, Hegseth called China the ‘sole pacing threat’

by Dave DeCamp March 30, 2025 , https://news.antiwar.com/2025/03/30/hegseth-orders-pentagon-to-focus-on-preparing-for-war-with-china-over-taiwan/

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth distributed a memo in mid-March ordering the Pentagon to put its focus on preparing for a war with China, a nuclear-armed power, by “assuming risk” in Europe and other parts of the world, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.

The Post didn’t publish the full memo, known as the Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance, but said it “outlines, in broad and sometimes partisan detail, the execution of President Donald Trump’s vision to prepare for and win a potential war against Beijing and defend the United States from threats in the ‘near abroad,’ including Greenland and the Panama Canal.”

The Pentagon has considered China the top “threat” facing the US since the first Trump administration, but the Post report said the memo is “extraordinary in its description of the potential invasion of Taiwan as the exclusive animating scenario that must be prioritized over other potential dangers — reorienting the vast US military architecture toward the Indo-Pacific region beyond its homeland defense mission.”

The report said that the guidance from Hegseth says the Pentagon’s force planning construct “will consider conflict only with Beijing when planning contingencies for a major power war” and leave the “threat from Moscow largely attended by European allies.”

Hegseth wrote that China “is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the US homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario.”

The memo reflects the Trump administration’s policy toward Europe and calls for NATO allies to take a “far greater” burden sharing. The document says that the US is unlikely to provide substantial support to Europe if Russia’s military advances in the region, saying the US will only provide nuclear deterrence.

The memo also calls for the US to pressure Taiwan to increase military spending “significantly.”

For years now, the US military has been openly preparing for war with China despite the risk of nuclear escalation. It has done this by expanding military bases in the Asia Pacific, building alliances, and increasing support for Taiwan. While being done in the name of deterrence, these steps have only increased tensions in the region, making conflict more likely.

The Post report says that Hegseth’s plans to prepare a “denial defense” of Taiwan include “increasing the troop presence through submarines, bombers, unmanned ships, and specialty units from the Army and Marine Corps, as well as a greater focus on bombs that destroy reinforced and subterranean targets.” His memo also calls for increasing the defenses of US troop positions in the region and establishing more weapons stockpiles.

April 5, 2025 Posted by | China, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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