Check Out the U.S. Army's New High-Tech Joint Light Tactical Vehicle. by Kris Osborn

The Army has added anti-tank missiles, lasers, anti-aircraft systems and drones to its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) as part of an effort to keep the multi-year program aligned with fast-changing threat developments.

While underway for several years, the weapons upgrades and adjustments were cited by Oshkosh Defense as part of a statement on the Army’s recent order of 248 new JLTVs for the service. The deal underscores the significance of the vehicle and points to its multi-year trajectory, as Oshkosh has been engineering the vehicle for more than a decade. The 248 new vehicles are being added to the thousands of JLTVs which have already been delivered to the service. 

Since its inception, the JLTV has been engineered with a broad series of technologies configured to adjust and modernize as new technologies emerge. While certain things like its TAK-4 independent suspension system and external configuration are likely not changed much since its initial construction, its command and control systems, weapons and technical backbone has likely been upgraded or modified substantially. For instance, emerging cyber and EW technologies, along with modern targeting and C4ISR systems all continue to be added. Oshkosh’s statement included the discussion of its having added a Remote Weapons Station up to 30mm, a technical advance giving soldiers an ability to fire heavier weapons from beneath armor cover by using a computerized video targeting screen. Drone and counter-drone technologies have also been added to the platform. 

Adding newer weapons systems to the platform, such as lasers and anti-drone weapons expands the mission envelope for the vehicle, enabling it to operate under higher-threat major warfare conditions. Lasers can of course attack drones, ground targets and even enemy helicopters at long-ranges as well as perform varying degrees of optical surveillance. They can also be precise and cause less collateral damage to buildings, enemy vehicles or nearby personnel should the vehicle need to attack in an urban area. Advanced sensors, by extension, can greatly expand the reconnaissance missions for the platform as well, giving it the opportunity to function to a greater degree as a forward-operating node in a larger network. 

The JLTV’s adjustment to incorporate a greater degree of air defense is also quite significant, as it aligns with a broader Army strategic move to emphasize heavier weapons and Short-Range-Air-Defense for its combat vehicles. Short Range Air Defense is a combat priority which, Army developers say, has “atrophied” in recent years during the ongoing counterinsurgency campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stryker vehicles, for instance, are now armed with an ability to vertically fire Hellfire missiles and even lasers at enemy drones and helicopters as part of the Army’s recognition that combat air defense is again emerging as a significant threat area in today’s great-power threat combat environment. Anti-tank weapons, such as a vehicle-mounted TOW missile also better enable the vehicle to support advancing armored and infantry brigades, particularly if it conducts high-risk scout missions in front of attacking units. 

The world is finally uniting against China’s bully tactics By Steven W. Mosher

World powers are no longer so eager to sit back and let Chinese President Xi Jinping walk all over them.

Twenty Indian soldiers are murdered in a surprise cross-border attack by the People’s Liberation Army. A Philippine fishing boat is sunk in its own territorial waters by increasingly predatory Chinese ships. Peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong are beaten bloody by riot police on Beijing’s orders. Australia’s farmers and miners are hit with trade sanctions after Canberra suggests that the virus, which came out of China, may have come from . . . China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has apparently decided that now is the time to assert dominance over an economically prostrate, post-pandemic world. But instead of just rolling over, a growing number of nations are fighting back.

India, for one, is clearly not intimidated. In response to China’s unprovoked attack, the largest democracy in the world has moved 30,000 troops to the Himalayan border. Many Indians are now boycotting “Made in China” products, a task made easier because online retailers like Amazon have been ordered by New Delhi to tell buyers where products are made.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also raised tariffs on Chinese goods, restricted Chinese investments and banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps from Indian phones.

Meanwhile, the people of the Philippines are up in arms over China’s expansionism into areas of the South China Sea claimed by Manilla. When anti-US President Rodrigo Duterte was elected in 2016, he initially ignored popular sentiment and announced a “pivot to Beijing” on the promise of $24 billion in Chinese investments.

Four years later, all that has changed. With the Chinese navy sailing ever closer to Philippine shores and few Chinese projects in progress, Duterte has reversed his earlier decision to terminate his country’s Visiting Forces Agreement with the US. Given a choice between having American or Chinese naval vessels anchored in Subic Bay, the decision was pretty obvious.

The sight of the 7.3 million free people of Hong Kong being crushed under the heel of the communist boot is one the world will not easily forget. It has already prompted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to offer British citizenship to 3 million Hong Kongers, not to mention take a tougher line toward China itself. Huawei, for example, can kiss its 5G business in the UK goodbye.

Enlarge ImageWorld leaders like UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Indian Minister Narendra Modi are taking a stand against China and their president Xi Jinping.

World leaders like UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are taking a stand against China and their president Xi Jinping.Storms Media Group; EFE/Shutter­stock; REUTERS; AP

The Australians are also fed up with Beijing’s bare-knuckled efforts to spy on and disrupt their country’s government, infrastructure and industries. To counter the recent surge in cyberattacks, Canberra has promised to recruit at least 500 cyberwarriors, bolstering the country’s online defenses. Meanwhile, an astonishing 94 percent of Australians say they want to begin decoupling their economy from China’s.

The same story is being repeated around the globe. From Sweden to Japan to Czechia, more and more nations are coming to understand China’s mortal threat to the postwar democratic, capitalist world order.

Xi Jinping and the Communist Party that he leads have so badly overplayed their hand that they have, in a mere six months, accomplished what Donald Trump could not in almost four years: They have unified the world against China.

And communist leader Xi has only himself to blame.

On Wednesday, Congress unanimously voted to sanction China for its new security law that would effectively nullify Hong Kong’s legal system and put Beijing in charge. But America cannot fight China alone. And now, thanks to Xi’s aggressive policies, we won’t have to.

As someone who has been warning about the China threat for decades, I take grim satisfaction in watching this new alliance crystallize with each new misstep by Beijing.

As Napoleon Bonaparte once remarked, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

Why doesn’t anyone want to buy 'cheap' Chinese Fighter Jets?

The high-tech wannabees of Asia are going through a bit of a rough patch lately. India has to postpone its Chandrayaan-2 moon mission just an hour before launch, due to a “technical snag.” Japan is imposing controls on the transfer of certain technologies to South Korea, which could impair the latter’s smartphone and semiconductor sectors.

A bit more obscure but just as critical a development is affecting China’s fighter jet business. The Pakistanis have announced that they will start building a more advanced version of its JF-17 combat aircraft, for deployment in 2020.

With these new “Block III” versions, Pakistan will by the middle of the next decade operate up to 200 JF-17 fighters. And each JF-17 it purchases means one less opportunity for China to sell its own fighter jets to its best customer.

China’s rise as a global arms exporter ::

As I noted before in How China weaponizes arms sales, China has come a long ways in terms of being an international arms exporter. During the 1980s and 1990s, most of its product was decidedly antiquated and obsolete, often knock-offs of Soviet systems developed during the 1950s (such as the MiG-21 fighter jet or the Silkworm antiship missile).

Since the turn of the 21st century, however, China’s defense industry has modernized to the extent that it is now able to offer an impressive array of armaments, competitive with their Western counterparts. These include the K-8 trainer jets, C-701 and C-802 antiship cruise missiles, and the FN-6 man-portable surface-to-air missile. These systems, along with modern self-propelled howitzers, armored vehicles, multiple rocket launchers, frigates, and submarines, have been increasingly sold around the world.

In particular, China has quite recently but also quite significantly become a key exporter of armed drones or unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs), such as its Wing Loong “Pterodactyl” and Caihong drones. Beijing has sold more than US$700 million worth of UCAVs to militaries in Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Myanmar (Burma), Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and the United Arab Emirates.

Consequently, according to data put out by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), China captured 5.2% of the global market during the period 2014-2018, putting it in the number four slot among the world’s biggest arms exporters. More and more countries have been buying Chinese arms; during the period 2014-18, China exported arms to 53 countries, compared with 41 in 2009-13 and 32 in 2004-2008. In recent years, China was the single largest supplier to Africa, capturing nearly one-third of the continent’s overall arms market, drawing customers away Europe, Russia, and the United States.


Where are the fighter jet sales?

And yet no one appears to be buying Chinese fighter jets. China manufactures at least one modern totally indigenous combat aircraft, the J-10. The J-10 is a “fourth-generation-plus” fighter, featuring a canard-and-delta-wing airframe, a fly-by-wire flight control system, and an advanced “glass” cockpit. Newer versions will likely be equipped with an advanced active phased-array radar. The J-10 can launch a variety of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions.

The J-10 is technologically the equal of the US F-16, and it is probably superior in performance to the JF-17. Yet it has garnered no overseas sales. The same can be said so far of other Chinese combat aircraft, including the JH-7 fighter-bomber (which has been in production for over 20 years) or the F-8IIM (a version of the J-8 fighter developed expressly for export).

It is true that the JF-17 is actually a joint Pakistani-Chinese fighter jet. It was inaugurated by the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation (CAC) in the early 1990s as the FC-1. Pakistan soon joined as a full partner and launch customer. Much of the technology (particularly the avionics, like the radar) are Chinese, although the engine is a licensed-produced version of the RD-33, developed by Russia.

According to news reports, the Pakistanis produce 58% of the JF-17s airframe and subsystems – including the wings, tail, and forward fuselage sections – as well as perform final assembly. CAC is responsible for the remaining 42%, particularly the mid- and rear- fuselages (and presumably the engine as well).

So China makes around 40 cents on every dollar with each JF-17 produced (although it probably has to kick some of this back to Russia as part of the licensed-production deal for the RD-33).


China: creating its own competition?

Only a handful of JF-17s have been sold to countries other than Pakistan: 16 to Myanmar and three to Nigeria. Additional sales have been hard in coming. Sri Lanka, Sudan, Malaysia, and Zimbabwe have “discussed” the idea of buying the aircraft, but so far no deals have materialized. As of now, the JF-17 depends almost entirely on the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) buying it.

But each JF-17 sale steals a sale from the Chinese directly. Case in point, the PAF was at one time thinking about acquiring up to three dozen J-10 fighters. Eventually, however, this deal fell through, and the Pakistanis went ahead with production of the Block III JF-17.

As Chinese fighter jets like the J-10 and the JH-7 age technologically, their “sellability” will continue to erode. It may be that FC-31 – China’s candidate for an entry-level fifth-generation fighter – may succeed where these earlier fighters did not, but it’s an open question at this point.

Ironically, China’s inability to successfully market a totally indigenous fighter comes at a time when the global fighter jet business stands to expand rapidly. According to the Teal Group, the global fighter market could be worth as much as US$520 billion over the next decade. Unless China can come up with a competitive fighter jet, it could miss out on much of this business.

Political Commissars on Chinese Warships Play Crucial Role in Interactions With Foreign Vessels By: John Grady

Chinese leader Xi Jinping aboard a PLA NAvy ship. Xinhua photo

Confrontational or irrational moves by Chinese warships and planes may not be actions of a “rogue commander” but rather decisions by a political commissar, a new report describes.

Cmdr. Jeff Benson, a senior military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former U.S. Naval Institute fellow, said Tuesday at a CSIS event that the role the political commissar plays aboard a People’s Liberation Army Navy warship is little understood but critically important in assessing Chinese short-term intentions and Beijing’s longer-range goals. The radically different command structure from the American hierarchy of a single skipper at the top also puts into play questions about “what is the party trying to achieve” by having a destroyer sail dangerously close to another vessel or an aircraft buzz a naval formation.

Zi Yang, co-author of “Party on the Bridge: Political Commissars in the Chinese Navy,” said President Xi Jin-ping “has tipped the balance a little more to the commissar” over the military commander in operations of a submarine, surface vessel or aircraft squadron to ensure adherence to party loyalty across the military.

One way of ensuring that shift is to ensure that political commissars are trained and skilled in the operations of the class of vessel or aircraft squadron they are assigned to. They “learn how to take command,” as one had to do during a confrontation with the Vietnamese after the ship’s commander fell ill.

What is often overlooked in examining Chinese military operations and its strategy is Xi’s emphasis on party-building during day-to-day operations.

“It’s time to understand” how decisions are made in the dual-command Chinese military structure. A commander and a commissar are aboard every vessel, Zi said. Benson added, “command and control are integrated as one; there is shared authority.”

Benson said the commander and the commissar have “distinct responsibilities” when it comes to serving aboard a warship. Among the commissar’s duties are personnel, including evaluating the commander, maintaining military and political discipline, checking on morale, conducting psychological operations and serving as a co-equal with the skipper.

Decisions are reached through an on-board party committee with at least two other members participating.

In short, the committee “decides to confront or not” or “whether to surface of not” for submarines underwater, Zi said, but “they first try to sort out matters in a personal manner.” Benson added, “it’s all about managing risk, and the commissar is in on that.”

This system can reduce unnecessary errors in operations, but it also is time-consuming in a rapidly developing emergency. Benson said “it’s up to the military commander to execute the military part of the operation.”

But in the end, even after handling an emergency, Zi said the commander’s decisions would be evaluated by the commissar.

Benson said the Kremlin had tried the dual command system but scrapped it. Before its collapse, “the commissar in the Soviet system was subordinate to the commander” when it came to operations.

Zi added there was a historical precedent for insisting on party loyalty in the Chinese navy. In the 1949 revolution that brought the Communist Party to power, most of the vessels in the fleet had been commanded and crewed by defectors from the Nationalist regime under Chiang Kai-shek.

Mao Tse-tung “wanted to ensure absolute loyalty to the party” from the start, he said.

The Communist Party under Xi doesn’t “want to fall into the same mistake as the Soviets” in downplaying loyalty in its military forces, Benson said.

Everyone Wants an 'F-35' Stealth Fighter. Several Countries Have Plans to Go 'Stealth' by Caleb Larson

Key Point: The F-35 is a great plane. But militaries around the world are planning for sixth-generation fighters.

The F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lighting II have stolen the spotlight in the world of aviation. So here are three stealth fighters under development that you may have never heard of. 

​This first appeared in 2020 and is being reposted due to reader interest.

Generic Future Fighter

Engineers at Saab are already beginning work on Sweden’s newest fighter, which will be designed from the get-go as a stealth fighter. 

Working with Linköping University in Sweden, Saab created a sub-scale model of what they envision as their Generic Future Fighter. Though the demonstrator airframe was only a 13 percent scale model, it reportedly is able to fly and gave researchers some insights into stealth fighter development. 

In keeping with Saab’s delta wing heritage, the Generic Future Fighter model has a modified delta wing and smaller canards just below and rear of the cockpit. It has an F-22 style bubble canopy with a chine running the length of the nose. Also, like the F-22 Raptor, the Generic Future Fighter uses a canted tail design. 

The small size of the demonstrator served to quickly and cheaply gather real-world flight data. The demonstrator reportedly performed as expected. 

KAI KF-X

The KAI KF-X is a joint South Korean-Indonesian stealth fighter project. The project was conceptualized as far back as 2001, but was initially dismissed as too technologically challenging for South Korea’s domestic aircraft manufacturing sector, and too expensive. 

The project was reassessed in 2010 and a joint partnership was Indonesia was created to help offset some of the research and development costs. Indonesia holds a 20 percent stake in the project and has committed to buying approximately 50 of the airframes once they enter production. 

The KAI KF-X superficially appears similar to the F-35 stealth fighter, though its capabilities are likely much less stealthy. It too has a canted tail and a nose chine, although the overall airframe appears to be more compact than the F-35. It is intended to be stealthier than the Eurofighter Typhoon and Dassault Rafale, and have more capabilities than the F-16 with greater range and service life. 

Project AZM

In tandem with China, Pakistan is reportedly developing a 5th generation stealth fighter. Like Pakistan’s previous venture with China, the JF-17, the AZM will likely be largely dependent on Chinese technology and assistance, though the final airframes may be assembled in Pakistan. 

China’s FC-31 stealth fighter may be a starting place for the Project AZM idea. It is lightweight, compact, and presumably on the cheaper (and less capable) side when compared to China’s Chengdu J-20. 

A home-grown stealth fighter would be a prestige win for Pakistan, though the likely focus on cost-reduction raises questions about the airframe’s final capabilities. Still, developing a stealth fighter would be an impressive feat for a country with a defense budget under $8 billion. 

Proliferating Capabilities

The proliferation of stealth technologies is the next frontier of weapon control regimes and may well rule the twenty-first-century.

Scientists say WHO ignores the risk that coronavirus floats in air as aerosol

Choir members wear masks during a May 31 service at the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul. (Ahn Young-joon / Associated Press)

Six months into a pandemic that has killed over half a million people, more than 200 scientists from around the world are challenging the official view of how the coronavirus spreads.

The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintain that you have to worry about only two types of transmission: inhaling respiratory droplets from an infected person in your immediate vicinity or — less common — touching a contaminated surface and then your eyes, nose or mouth.

But other experts contend that the guidance ignores growing evidence that a third pathway also plays a significant role in contagion.

They say multiple studies demonstrate that particles known as aerosols — microscopic versions of standard respiratory droplets — can hang in the air for long periods and float dozens of feet, making poorly ventilated rooms, buses and other confined spaces dangerous, even when people stay six feet from one another.

“We are 100% sure about this,” said Lidia Morawska, a professor of atmospheric sciences and environmental engineering at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

She makes the case in an open letter to the WHO accusing the United Nations agency of failing to issue appropriate warnings about the risk. A total of 239 researchers from 32 countries signed the letter, which is set to be published next week in a scientific journal.

In interviews, experts said that aerosol transmission appears to be the only way to explain several “super-spreading” events, including the infection of diners at a restaurant in China who sat at separate tables and of choir members in Washington state who took precautions during a rehearsal.

WHO officials have acknowledged that the virus can be transmitted through aerosols but say that occurs only during medical procedures such as intubation that can spew large quantities of the microscopic particles. CDC officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Dr. Benedetta Allegranzi, a top WHO expert on infection prevention and control, said in responses to questions from The Times that Morawska and her group presented theories based on laboratory experiments rather than evidence from the field.

“We value and respect their opinions and contributions to this debate,” Allegranzi wrote in an email. But in weekly teleconferences, a large majority of a group of more than 30 international experts advising the WHO has "not judged the existing evidence sufficiently convincing to consider airborne transmission as having an important role in COVID-19 spread."

She added that such transmission “would have resulted in many more cases and even more rapid spread of the virus.”

Since the coronavirus was first detected in China in December, understanding of how it spreads has evolved considerably, resulting in shifting guidelines regarding the use of masks.

At first, the WHO and CDC said masks were overkill for ordinary people and should be conserved for health workers. Later, the CDC recommended masks only for people with COVID-19 symptoms.

Then in April, after it became clear that people without symptoms could also spread the virus, the CDC suggested masks for everybody when physical distancing was difficult, a position the WHO eventually adopted.

Now as outbreaks proliferate and governors order a new round of closures, nearly all U.S. states have made face coverings mandatory or recommended them, primarily to prevent wearers from spreading the disease.

The proponents of aerosol transmission said masks worn correctly would help prevent the escape of exhaled aerosols as well as inhalation of the microscopic particles. But they said the spread could also be reduced by improving ventilation and zapping indoor air with ultraviolet light in ceiling units.

Jose Jimenez, a University of Colorado chemist who signed the letter, said the idea of aerosol transmission should not frighten people. "It's not like the virus has changed," he said. "We think the virus has been transmitted this way all along, and knowing about it helps protect us."

He and other scientists cited several studies supporting the idea that aerosol transmission is a serious threat.

As early as mid-March, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that when the virus was suspended in mist under laboratory conditions it remained “viable and infectious” for three hours, which researchers said equated to as much as half an hour in real-world conditions.

It had already been established that some people, known as “super spreaders,” happen to be especially good at exhaling fine material, producing 1,000 times more than others.

A recent study found coronavirus RNA in hallways near hospital rooms of COVID-19 patients. Another raised concerns that aerosols laden with the virus were shed by floor-cleaning equipment and by health workers removing personal protective gear.

Researchers in China found evidence of aerosols containing the coronavirus in two Wuhan hospitals.

It was the outbreak among choir members in Mount Vernon, Wash. — and a report about the incident in The Times — that first piqued the interest of several of the aerosol proponents. Of 61 singers at a March 10 rehearsal, all but eight became sick, despite the members using hand sanitizer and avoiding hugging or shaking hands. Two people died.

Researchers analyzed ventilation in this church hall, where Skagit Valley Chorale members met for a rehearsal that led to a fatal outbreak of COVID-19. (Karen Ducey / For The Times)

A team led by Shelly Miller, a University of Colorado professor of mechanical engineering, dug into church-hall blueprints, furnace specifications, locations of choir members and hours of attendance. The researchers diagrammed movements of the singer who was identified as the person who unwittingly brought the virus to practice.

Inhalation of aerosols “most likely dominated infection transmission during this event,” the researchers wrote in a paper undergoing peer review, concluding that the ill person, who had symptoms similar to a common cold, was unlikely to have spent time within six feet of many singers or to have touched surfaces in common with them.

“We believe it likely that shared air in the fellowship hall, combined with high emissions of respiratory aerosol from singing, were important contributing factors,” the paper said.

Eventually researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including several who have studied the role of aerosols in the spread of the flu, SARS and other infectious diseases, joined forces to campaign for greater recognition of aerosol transmission.

They said that the coronavirus is less contagious through the air than measles but that the risk of transmission goes up the longer air remains stagnant and the longer people continue to breathe it.

In interviews, they said WHO officials had unfairly set a higher bar for showing aerosol spread than was required for acceptance of the other two pathways. “For them, droplets and touch are so obvious that they’re proven, but airborne is so outlandish that it needs a very high level of evidence,” Jimenez said.

Proof would require exposing large numbers of healthy people to aerosols emitted by COVID-19 patients, a study that scientists said would be unethical.

Donald Milton, a University of Maryland environmental health professor and an expert on aerosols who co-wrote the letter, said the average person breathes 10,000 liters of air each day.

"You only need one infectious dose of the coronavirus in 10,000 liters, and it can be very hard to find it and prove that it’s there, which is one of the problems we’ve had,” he said.

Watch China’s actions, don’t listen to its words

A family member cries and bids farewell to a prison van after an anti-government protester Sin Ka-ho was sentenced to four years for rioting, in Hong Kong on Friday

Beijing’s parasitic model weakens the global economy, its traditional hosts are becoming poorer. Which is likely one of the reasons why Beijing is now so focused on leeching off of Africa, South America, and others. It’s also why being blocked from a market such as India could be a serious problem.

 

Miami: Words matter. They shape your thoughts and your thoughts shape your actions. The more complex the situation, the more important the need to use precise words. They are the solid stepping-stones that can lead you to real solutions, and help you avoid the sucking quagmire of obfuscation.

One of the most complex situations at the moment is the changing nature of nation-to-nation relationships with China. The words China wants us to use are telling.

In the case of the US-China relationship, the Chinese Communist Party has been very keen to use words (both positive and negative) that create an impression of equality between Beijing and Washington.

A few years ago, Beijing promoted the idea of China and the US being the “G2”—two equal governments, with primacy over the rest. The G2 construct allowed Beijing to imply that the world should be divided into two colonial-style spheres of influence, one for the US, and one for China.

This was explicit. In 2008, US Navy Admiral Timothy J. Keating told the Senate Armed Services Committee about a comment a senior Chinese officer made to him: “As we develop our aircraft carriers, why don’t we reach an agreement, you and I? You take Hawaii east. We’ll take Hawaii west. We’ll share information, and we’ll save you all the trouble of deploying your naval forces west of Hawaii.”

While American allies west of Hawaii took China at its word, and became increasingly concerned, Washington insiders seemed largely to accept the inevitability of the G2 narrative—that also conveniently provided substantial financial returns and opportunities for key bridging individuals, including some American CEOs, academics, policy analysts, politicians, consultants and others. When pressed by doubters, obscuring verbal dust was thrown in the air in the form of the term “China’s peaceful rise”.

More recently, especially as a result of Beijing’s mismanagement (at the very least) of the Covid-19 outbreak, its aggression along its land and maritime borders, its repression in Hong Kong, and its overt talk of doing things like withholding antibiotics to put pressure on the US, the terminology has turned to, at least economically, “divorce” from China.

The word “divorce” again implies the situation involves equals, with the added element that divorce is a loaded, negative word, with deep emotional baggage for many—something to be avoided if possible.

“Divorce” is a word that suits Beijing. It is also completely inaccurate.

The US and China were never “married”, economically or otherwise. A marriage is a partnership of complimentarily, of sharing, of trust, in which both members are enriched, and become stronger.

The US-China relationship is much more like the relationship between a host and its parasite.

Let me tell you about the castrator barnacle (sacculina carcini). The female slug-like barnacle finds a crab and probes its hard shell until it finds a weak point where it can inject part of itself into the crab’s bloodstream. Once inside, it spreads its tendrils throughout the crab’s system, feeding on it, controlling its behaviour, and growing. If the victim is a male crab, the parasitic process castrates it. Sacculina carcini uses the crab to host its reproduction and help it spread across the ocean—riding in it until it dies. At which point, the parasite also dies, because it depended on leeching off the host for sustenance.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

Since at least the 1970s, and accelerating since joining the WTO, the Chinese Communist Party and its related entities have latched on to the US (and others) probing for entry points, enmeshing with systems, sucking out capital and intellectual property, weakening defences, modifying behaviour, neutering response, and spreading from there. It left its hosts sickened and disoriented. Even though, more often than not, the host at least initially, welcomed the barnacle.

China calls this approach comprehensive national power—and includes opaquely intermeshed tendrils such as economic, diplomatic, military, cyber and soft power.

Think this is an overstatement? The effects can be seen more clearly in smaller economies. Take, for example, the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific, population 100,000. Within the last twenty years or so, recently established Chinese-run shops have taken over about 90% of the retail sector. The vast majority of the products sold are sourced from China, and most of the profits are repatriated to China.

This isn’t normal economic engagement. There are links between major Chinese investors, the Chinese Embassy, and some key decision-makers in the country, facilitating illegal and corrupt behaviour, further distorting the market and politics. There are regular issues with these shops selling expired or mislabeled items, hiding revenue and attempting to illegally transfer money out of the country. They are operating, essentially, like they would operate in China—doing what they can get away with. The Chinese Embassy does not help in investigations, background checks, or information sharing.

This isn’t about the individual, hard-working ethnic Chinese. If they have family or business ties to the mainland, and someone with power in the Chinese system wants them to do something, they don’t have much choice. The system travels with them.

This is about the export of the fundamentally extractive and exploitative Chinese system and what it is doing to its host country. The result for countries such as Tonga is a constant leeching of capital back to China both for the purchase of the Chinese imports to sell in the shops and from shop owners then sending their profits back to China. It also creates an environment in which local shops can’t compete, it embeds corruption and it distorts the decision making process.

To some degree or another this focused takeover of soft and/or strategic areas has happened in myriad other sectors in myriad other countries. Recently Beijing complained because India blocked 59 Chinese-made apps from its market. Global Times tweeted that the ban could result in a loss of $6 billion to Chinese internet company ByteDance, which gives an idea of how much money Chinese apps suck out of host economies. Another reason for the decision was that Delhi was concerned that the apps were a threat to national security, including allowing for espionage.

In mid-June, at roughly the same time Chinese and Indian troops were fighting in Ladakh, a Chinese company won a major construction contract in Delhi by underbidding an Indian company by a marginal amount. Questions were immediately raised if the Chinese company had somehow accessed the electronic bids of competitors in order to win the contract. It’s very difficult to know. But policymakers in India seem to think it’s consistent with what they know of China’s behaviour, and don’t want to take any more chances.

Beijing may complain but, of course, it has consistently blocked foreign apps from operating in its own market. This has not only allowed it to protect itself from the sort of leeching it is inflicting on others, but it has protected its own technology ecosystem as it develops and prepares itself to expand outwards. The same protection for its own development is true in a range of other sectors, including the forced transfer of intellectual property for companies setting up in China. In those cases, it didn’t even have to go to its hosts, its hosts allowed themselves to be desiccated in China.

The Chinese Communist Party is not interested in, and not capable of, being an equal partner, where everyone grows together. Beijing wants to be able to control the economies of others, siphoning growth to sustain its own goals.

If you want to see what that looks like, just go to the atrophied manufacturing towns across the US that targeted, Chinese-government supported competition has sucked dry.

If you want to watch the process in action, just keep your eye on Hong Kong. As the CCP extends its tendrils into its economy, society and political system, Hong Kong will shrivel and stagnate, going from a thriving global center to a zombified proxy for Beijing.

The same is true for international organizations targeted by Beijing, such as the WHO. As was seen during the initial stages of the virus outbreak, WHO seemed more like a carrier for Beijing’s narrative than an independent, healthy science-based organization.

Of course, the irony here is that as Beijing’s parasitic model weakens the global economy and its institutions, its traditional hosts are becoming poorer and so less sustaining. The Chinese Communist Party’s economic heyday will likely have been when the US, European and Japanese economies were big and strong and it could ride them like a young castrator barnacle.

Which is likely one of the reasons why Beijing is now so focused on leeching off of Africa, South America, and others. It’s also why being blocked from a market such as India could be a serious problem. It is running out of healthy targets to infest. So, it is latching on to still developing economies, stunting their growth with predatory economics (and in many cases unviable loans) to feed Beijing.

Those who really care about the Chinese people, should work towards creating conditions where China’s economy becomes “normalized”. Where there is rule of law, transparency, accountability—elements that allow organic and sustainable growth so that China can truly become the global partner it should be. Of course these are all the things that are antithetical to the Chinese Communist Party.

Which brings us back to words. Disengaging from the noxious elements of the Chinese economy isn’t a divorce, it’s a deworming. It may be the only way the host survives, and it’s the best way for the parasite to evolve to a self-sustaining organism. Anything less, and we will may all stagger towards an interlinked extinction.