May all such malign actors go to Hades ...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55168633

Have you seen the doctored photo the chinese are spreading of the Australian soldier? Things are getting ugly and dirty tricks are at play.
Some years back- 20 or so, My family was doing business in China. We had a chinese person coming to NZ who didnt speak english so we hired a kiwi chinese girl as translator. Sitting at the airport and two men walk up to her and pull her aside and have a stern discussion in Chinese.
She was quite shaken and came back and said they were from the Chinese govt and they had just warned her that she had dealt with someone with links to Taiwan and that she must stop that association.
This stuff is not new and their state influence is everywhere.

And Joe Biden loves em!

And owes them........

.

Its a tough one. You want successful people running a country. Yet there is a line that should not be crossed and there should be a very open disclosure for anyone who has business holdings etc in other countries. Especially countries of such great power.
I would almost say that any such contact should have a litmus test to pass before an individual is allowed to run for high office.

I really hope that biden has good advisors and listens, which I tend to think he will. I do not see him as prepared to work against his country.
As an outsider, I have not much faith in the Us president, but massive faith in your overall system. There are good people in places where it ought to count.

I saw an article recently about China and long term planning relating to rare earth metals, etc.

Here's an article from 2018. I'll see if I can find the more recent article.


China Has a Secret Weapon in the Race to Dominate Electric Cars

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-china-cobalt/

Over the past two years, cobalt has emerged as one of the hottest commodities of the electric-vehicle revolution. The silvery-blue metal, an important component in lithium-ion batteries, has more than doubled in price, making carmakers and tech giants fret about securing their future needs.

The focus on the metal has turned a spotlight on the obscure supply chain that takes cobalt produced in mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canada or Morocco, and ultimately delivers cobalt-containing batteries to companies from Samsung Electronics Co. to Volkswagen AG. That supply chain is dominated by Chinese companies.


Here's something from Oct 2020

https://www.fpri.org/article/2...-why-we-should-care/

quote:

Originally posted by JTEX:
And Joe Biden loves em!

And owes them........

.

Trump loves them.

He even has a secret bank account there.

Not to mention his real estate deals in Russia. Somehow this does not seem to trouble some folks here.