Kinaforum

søndag 11. januar 2026

Torbjørn Færøvik: How Presidents Fall - Elections, Illness, and the Constitution

My dear neighbor says she’s burning to throw a sponge cake in Donald Trump’s face. I warn her against doing so. She makes the best sponge cakes imaginable, with loads of cream and fresh strawberries on top. And he doesn’t deserve that. Give the cake to me instead!

Earlier I wrote about the possibility of sending Trump to where the pepper grows. But do we really wish India and Indonesia such harm? Surely we can show at least a little mercy, even in difficult times.

So what options do we have—or more precisely, what options do Americans have—to remove Trump?

Les mer

lørdag 10. januar 2026

Taiwan conflict ‘catastrophic’ for China: US report

Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios.

The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops.

Trump Gives China a Propaganda Win in Latin America

The Trump administration's capture of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife after a lightning raid early Saturday morning and its ensuing push to assert control over the country is a reminder of Washington’s determination to assert its interests in its hemisphere while serving to sideline its Chinese rival—at least for now—one analyst says.

Since the attack, which Venezuelan officials say killed at least 80 people, including civilians, President Donald Trump has threatened further action if the new acting leader, Maduro’s former No. 2 Delcy Rodriguez, does not cooperate with a range of U.S. priorities, including building out oil infrastructure.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials have also made it clear U.S. officials insist the move is not about seizing Venezuela’s vast petroleum reserves but about keeping the country free from the control of U.S. adversaries, including longtime Venezuelan partners such as China, Russia and Iran.

Beijing’s long game in a post-Maduro Venezuela

The capture of Nicolás Maduro by American special forces has provided the world with its most jarring image of the new Washington realism. For the Trump administration, the pre-dawn raid in Caracas is a matter of law enforcement and hemispheric security. For Beijing, the event is being framed not through the lens of a personal rivalry but as a defining moment for the international order.

While the immediate reaction from the Chinese foreign ministry was a predictable condemnation of “hegemonic acts,” a closer look at China’s behavior reveals a response that is strikingly pragmatic and legally focused.China is currently performing a delicate diplomatic balancing act. It has signaled that its primary interest is not the restoration of a fallen strongman but the preservation of a stable, predictable global system in which sovereignty remains the ultimate currency.

What Stephen Miller Gets Wrong About Human Nature

If you want to know a political leader’s governing philosophy, you could cut through a lot of bluster by just asking them who their guy is: John Locke or Thomas Hobbes? Anyone who’s taken Poli Sci 101 will understand what this means. The 17th-century philosophers each offered a picture of human nature in its rawest form, and they came to different conclusions. Locke, whose ideas were central to the birth of modern democracy, thought that people were capable of reason and moral judgment. Hobbes, on the other hand, believed that we were vicious creatures who needed to be protected from ourselves by a powerful king. Whether a leader is Lockean or Hobbesian really does set the table for the kind of government they want.

Farewell, forever wars, hello empire? The week that changed the world

In January 1899, the American gunboat USS Wilmington set out on an expedition to Venezuela, steaming up the Orinoco River toward the country’s interior. On board was an American diplomat, Francis Loomis, the US envoy to Venezuela. The mission was to show the flag, explore commercial opportunities – including routes to supply gold-mining operations – and display a little firepower.

An article in Naval History described how Loomis liked to demonstrate the ship’s Colt machine guns to local officials.

“This gun, firing some 500 shots a minute, produced a vivid impression here,” Loomis wrote in a report. “I made a point of having this gun fired anytime there were any army officials on board.”

Torbjørn Færøvik: En bløtkake midt i fleisen stanser ikke Donald Trump. Men hva annet kan gjøre det?

Min elskverdige nabo sier hun brenner etter å kaste en bløtkake i fleisen på Donald Trump. Selv advarer jeg henne mot å gjøre det. Hun lager nemlig de beste bløtkaker som tenkes kan, med masse krem og friske jordbær på toppen. Og det fortjener han ikke. Gi heller bløtkaken til meg!

Tidligere har jeg skrevet om muligheten av å sende Trump dit peppern gror. Men vil vi folket i India og Indonesia så vondt? Litt barmhjertighet må vi da kunne vise, selv om vi lever i en vanskelig tid.

Så hvilke muligheter har vi, eller mer presist amerikanerne, til å fjerne Trump?

Les mer

US has right to take over any country for its resources: Miller

“Belligerent” was how one Democratic lawmaker described a diatribe given by top White House adviser Stephen Miller on CNN Monday evening regarding the Trump administration’s right to take over Venezuela – or any other country – if doing so is in the interest of the US.

To Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), however, Miller was simply providing viewers with “a very good definition of imperialism” as he described the worldview the administration is operating under as it takes control of Venezuela and eyes other countries, including Greenland, that it believes it can and should invade.

“This is what imperialism is all about,” Sanders told CNN‘s Jake Tapper. “And I suspect that people all over the world are saying, ‘Wow, we’re going back to where we were 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, where the big, powerful countries were exploiting poorer countries for their natural resources.’”

Smiles all around at South Korea-China summit, the contrast with Japan could hardly be greater

While the world’s eyes were on Venezuela, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung traveled to Beijing to open a new era of cooperation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Lee also reiterated South Korea’s commitment to the One China policy.

Lee led a delegation that included about 200 economic officials and representatives of South Korean business, including Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, and LG Group Chairman Koo Kwang-mo. The two presidents held a summit meeting on Monday, December 5, which resulted in 14 memoranda of understanding (MOUs) and one certificate of cultural asset donation. The South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo lamented the fact that that they issued no joint statement. But the videos of Lee and Xi shaking hands and smiling, along with Lee taking selfies of the two of them and their wives, probably said more than any formal document could.

Beijing moves to cut losses in Venezuela after Maduro’s capture

China has drawn up plans to minimize losses in Venezuela and fine-tune its broader overseas investment strategy after the United States captured the Latin American country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, on January 3.

Since the US military operation in Venezuela, the Chinese government has been busily assessing the situation and calculating potential losses to its economic interests. On Wednesday and Thursday, Chinese officials, media and commentators started expressing their views, showing that Beijing has finished its assessment.

In general, Beijing regrets having put too many eggs in one basket and having been too ready to believe that its investments in Venezuela would face minimal risks under international law. It also admits that it had underestimated the Trump administration’s ambition in the Western Hemisphere.

Some commentators are saying that, in the short run, China wants to ensure it can continue receiving crude oil from Venezuela, which still owes it about US$10 billion to US$20 billion. In the middle and long term, China may seek to sell certain fixed assets in Venezuela to Western firms or form partnerships with them to limit losses.

China reports major road-building achievement in Tibet in strategic effort

China said Jan 6 that its local government in Tibet autonomous region’s efforts to build a modern transportation network had brought the total length of highways in it open to traffic to 125,200 kilometres by the end of 2025. China’s road building in Tibet is more than anything else strategic – for strengthening control over a restive region, border militarisation, opening up mines located in remote hitherto inaccessible areas, and for furthering its Sinicization drive.

While China’s official chinadaily.com.cn cited this as improvement in safety and public transport, road building in Tibet is much more than that. It is highly strategic, opening up the region’s vast and often critically important mineral resources for exploitation and transport to China, for maintaining iron-fist control over a restive region, and asserting dominance over Tibet by engaging in territorial disputes with its neighbouring countries.

2025 temperature rose for record fourth consecutive year on Tibetan Plateau region

The temperature on the Tibetan Plateau region last year was 1.12 C above normal, breaking record for four consecutive years, reported China’s official chinadaily.com.cn Jan 7, citing data released by the China Meteorological Administration’s National Climate Center.

The Third Pole region — covering high-altitude areas in and around the Tibetan Plateau — has now broken its temperature record for four consecutive years, from 2022 to 2025, the centre was cited as saying.

The report said most parts of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were warmer than usual last year, with 16 provincial-level regions recording their warmest year since 1961. The PRC recorded an average of 16.5 high-temperature days with a daily high of 35 C or above, the most in history and 7.4 days more than normal, the centre has said.

China and Japan, uneasy neighbors in East Asia, are at odds again

They’re at it again.

China and Japan — frenemies, trading partners and uneasy neighbors with a tortured, bloody history they still struggle to navigate — are freshly at each other’s rhetorical throats as 2026 begins. And it’s over the same sticking points that have kept them resentful and suspicious for many decades: Japan’s occupation of parts of China in the 20th century, the use of military power in East Asia, economics and politics — and, of course, pride.From insinuations that Chinese citizens face dangers in Japan to outright accusations of resurgent Japanese imperialism, this first week of the year in China has been marked by the communist government scorning Tokyo on multiple fronts and noticeably embracing the visiting leader of another crucial strategic neighbor: South Korea.

The latest chapter in Japan-China enmity surged In November when Japan’s new leader waded into choppy bilateral waters. She said, in effect, that if China moved militarily against Taiwan, she wouldn’t rule out involving Japan’s constitutionally defense-only military. That didn’t go over well in Beijing, which has teed off on Tokyo over the years for far less.

Businessman extradited from Cambodia to China suspected of running vast online criminal empire

Chen Zhi boasted of pulling in $30 million a day, prosecutors in the United States said — a suspected criminal mastermind and onetime internet cafe manager who authorities say presented himself as a legitimate businessman.

But in reality, they say, he ran online gambling sites, scams and other illegal businesses from a sprawling headquarters along the Cambodian coast.

On Thursday, Chen was in custody in China, at the center of what authorities at the Chinese Ministry of Public Security said was a “major achievement” in law enforcement cooperation between them and the Cambodian government. The ministry said that Chen was in its custody and that it soon would issue arrest warrants for key players in his network.

Trump has a China problem in Venezuela: What to do with Beijing’s debt and oil stakes

When it comes to claiming that Venezuelan oil is now under his control, President Donald Trump is mincing no words. But no small part of that oil belongs to China under contracts it struck with Caracas years ago, setting the stage for a delicate diplomatic dance in the next few weeks.

Some experts expect Trump to work with China in an effort to stabilize trade relations. After all, Trump is expected to visit Beijing in April as part of an effort to protect the fragile trade truce he reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping late last year.

“The administration appears focused on avoiding unnecessary escalation or new irritants with Beijing while keeping leverage firmly on Washington’s terms,” said Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at the think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He added that he doubted Trump would risk turning Venezuela into a “flashpoint that complicates trade dynamics or Trump’s personal engagement with Xi.”

More diplomatic and economic tensions surface between China, Japan as a bumpy week ends

A week in which longtime tensions between neighbors China and Japan ratcheted up economically and politically drew to a close with no sign of improvements Friday as the Chinese ambassador in Tokyo rebuffed his host nation and the Japanese reported delayed shipments to suppliers in China because of the spat.

The two developments capped a week where China made clear its displeasure with Japan by instituting new export controls, condemning what it called Tokyo’s renewed militarism and cozying up to another regional neighbor, South Korea, during its leader’s visit to Beijing.

On Friday, the Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper, People’s Daily, kept the jabs coming.

“New militarism will lead Japan back into the abyss,” it said in an editorial. “History serves as a stark warning, yet the Japanese right wing is repeating its old tricks.”

Musk-owned X sued by exiled dissident for closing his account at China’s behest

An overseas Chinese democracy activist has sued the social media platform X after it failed to restore his account after repeated representations over the past nearly four years, reported independent.co.uk Jan 7. The platform, owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest person who reportedly owes anywhere from 60 to 70% of his net worth to his businesses in China, “permanently suspended” his account “without warning, notice or explanation,” on Feb 15, 2023, US-based pro-democracy activist Wilson Lei Chen, also known as Chen Pokong, has alleged in his $2 million plus lawsuit.

Chen’s suit, filed at the Manhattan federal court on Jan 5, describes him as “a renowned author, columnist, political commentator, [and] dissident.” Chen is representing himself in the lawsuit.

Imprisoned in the early 1990s for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement,” after which he fled to the United States, Chen has alleged that X unilaterally shuttered his account based on disinformation circulated by Beijing.

Trump Plays Venezuelan Oil Card Against China

The U.S. raid on Venezuela and capture of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife have put a spotlight on Washington’s resolve to block China’s influence in a region the U.S. views as its backyard.

Though an alleged but unproven claim that the Maduro government was involved in a narco‑conspiracy has been pushed as the main driver of the strike, which a senior Venezuelan official said left at least 80 dead, and which critics say violated both international and U.S. law. U.S. President Donald Trump also cited Venezuela's energy resources in justifying the operation.

Trump has said he would “run” the country’s oil operations for an unspecified period and has begun discussions with American oil companies about operating them.

“We’re going to be taking a tremendous amount of wealth out of the ground,” he said following the U.S. attack.