Month: March 2023

Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A group of bipartisan U.S. senators introduced a bill on Wednesday to ban the purchase of U.S. farmland by Chinese persons and entities.

In a press release, Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), John Tester (D-Mont.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) stated their collective objective for the bill: to address national security concerns—food security and China’s threat to America’s military and economic power—over Chinese farmland ownership in the United States.

If enacted, the ban would also apply to agricultural land leases, regardless of the lease duration. The legislation’s farmland purchase prohibition covers a person or entity “owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of a foreign adversary,” defined as Iran, North Korea, China, or Russia. The ban excludes U.S. citizens or green card holders.

Braun, who filed paperwork in November to run for Indiana governor in 2024, sounded the alarm about the exponential increase in Chinese ownership of American farmland: “Chinese ownership of American farmland increased more than 20-fold in the past decade,” he said in his press release. “We cannot allow our top foreign adversaries to buy up American farmland and compromise our agricultural supply chains.”

As of Dec. 31, 2020, China owned 325,686 acres of U.S. agricultural land, according to the Department of Agriculture. While the acreage under Chinese ownership is slightly less than 1 percent of all foreign-held agricultural land, it represents a 20-fold leap from 13,720 acres in 2010.

“Foreign adversaries, including the Chinese Communist Party, should never be allowed to control Americans’ agricultural lands or our food supply,” echoed Rubio in the same press release. “We cannot allow these regimes to continue exploiting the openness of our system. This bipartisan legislation is an important step to protect our national security interests,” he added.

The new bill also specifies land for ranching purposes as agricultural land, in addition to land used for “agricultural, forestry, or timber production purposes” as defined by the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA) of 1978.

Protecting US Farmland

In recent years, China buying U.S. farmland has become a major concern in many states.

In Virginia, a bill that bans foreign adversaries, including China, from buying agricultural land in the commonwealth has passed both chambers of the state legislature and is ready for the governor’s signature by March 27.

In Texas and Florida, state legislators are pushing for similar bills to pass.

The language in Braun’s bill will enable the federal government to address deals similar to two recent high-profile cases, both cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a cross-departmental panel that reviews foreign acquisitions for national security risks.

Fufeng USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Fufeng Group, purchased 370 acres of farmland in the fall of 2021 for a corn mill project in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The proposed site is within 15 miles of the Grand Forks Air Force Base, which houses sensitive drone, satellite, and surveillance technology. In December 2022, CFIUS decided that it didn’t have jurisdiction to probe the land purchase. Before that, the project had prompted significant pushback from Republican lawmakers and locals who said it threatened both national and economic security.

At the end of January, the U.S. Air Force warned that the project poses a “significant threat to national security.” In early February, Grand Forks City Council voted unanimously to abandon the project approved in July 2022.

In 2016, a Chinese billionaire and former military official bought about 140,000 acres of land in Val Verde County, Texas, and planned to build a wind farm on the property. The purchased land included several ranches within 80 miles of the Laughlin Air Force Base and within some of the base’s pilot training zones.

The project was halted by a new Texas law that came into effect in June 2021. The Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act bans Texas businesses and governments from doing business with foreign entities from China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran if these transactions would provide the foreign enterprises remote access or control of critical infrastructure.

Braun and company are but one group out of many federal legislators who want to tackle the China threat on U.S. farmland.

Earlier this month, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) unveiled a bill that would bar corporations and individuals linked to the Chinese regime from buying or leasing U.S. agricultural land. At the same time, existing owners must divest their interests under the bill or face fines and criminal consequences. Last month, Sens. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and Tester introduced a bill to ban China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from buying or leasing U.S. farmland and agricultural businesses.

A large research vessel, once owned by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, was overturned in dry dock during strong winds on Wednesday in Scotland, leading to injuries of nearly three dozen dockworkers. 

The Telegraph reported the 250-foot research vessel, RV Petrel, was dislodged from dry dock braces by strong winds. The 3,000-ton ship tipped on its side with 50 workers on the vessel.

Deep sea research vessel RV Petrel, has blown over at Imperial Dock (dry docks) in Leith, Edinburgh. Leaving a number of people injured. @SWNS pic.twitter.com/RpStkc8s3i

— ARROWSMITH🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 (@KtLeeArrowsmith) March 22, 2023

Images posted on Twitter show RV Petrel tilting at a 45-degree angle.  

Emergency services are responding to a major incident at Leith docks- a ship has been dislodged from its holding in strong winds.
Terrifying for those on board, my thoughts are with those who’ve been injured & hope everyone recovers quickly.
Please avoid area. pic.twitter.com/aREtG80Gq1

— Cllr Adam McVey (@adamrmcvey) March 22, 2023

NHS Lothian said 23 workers were admitted to a hospital, some with serious injuries, while the Scottish Ambulance Service treated 12 others on scene at Imperial Dock in Leith, Edinburgh. 

The ambulance service sent 12 ambulances, an air ambulance, three trauma teams and other resources to the scene, while the fire service also attended.

NHS Lothian received 21 patients, with 17 being admitted to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (ERI) for treatment and four to the Western General Hospital (WGH) in the city. A further two were taken by ambulance to the Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy, Fife.

The health board said it was forced to cancel outpatient appointments, endoscopies and planned operations to support accident and emergency staff and free up surgeons for the influx. -The Telegraph

The ship’s previous owner, Allen, converted it into a deep submergence research vessel in 2017 — one year before he died of complications due to lymphoma cancer. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

Ukrainians, and many Europeans and Americans, are defining an envisioned Ukrainian victory as the complete expulsion of all Russians from its 2013 borders.

Or, as a Ukrainian national security chief put it, the war ends with Ukrainian tanks in Red Square.

But mysteries remain about such ambitious agendas.

What would that goal entail?

Giving Ukraine American F-16s to strike bases and depots in Mother Russia? The gifting of 1,000 M1 Abrams tanks? Using American Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Black Sea fleet?

A huge arsenal that would guarantee total victory rather than not losing?

Russia’s cruel strategy is to grind down Ukraine and turn its eastern regions into a Verdun-like deathscape.

So is a brave Ukraine really winning the war when it loses about 0.6 soldiers for every Russian it kills?

Russia plans to leverage its extra 100 million people, its 10-times larger economy, and its 30-times larger territory to pulverize Ukraine and tire its Western patrons — whatever the costs to Russia.

Yet why were only a few in past administrations calling for a joint Western effort to expel Putin’s forces from the borderlands and Crimea captured in 2014?

Why are Putin’s 2014 invasions now seen as urgent rectifiable crimes of aggression in 2022, but were not regarded as reparable during the prior eight years?

Is the United States economically capable or politically unified or socially stable enough to wage a huge proxy war on the frontiers of a nuclear Russia?

During the last comparable multibillion-dollar military efforts — the First Gulf War in 1990-1991 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq — the ratio of American debt to GDP was respectively 40 and 50 percent.

Today it hovers at nearly three times that figure at 129%, given some $33 trillion in accumulated debt.

Currently, the American economy is entering a stagflationary crisis. Banking, real estate, and financial sectors seem on the brink of imploding, especially after the near-record multibillion-dollar collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX, and the meltdowns of the Silicon Valley and Signature banks.

Around 7 million illegal entries have occurred across the southern border since January 2021 alone. Millions of new impoverished foreign nationals tax social services, spike crime, and strain relations with an increasingly antagonistic Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

An emboldened Lopez Obrador now brags that 40 million of his countrymen have cumulatively crossed the border, many illegally. He urges them to vote for Democratic candidates to ensure more open borders.

Last year, over 100,000 Americans died of opiate overdoses. Most of the deaths were attributable to Mexican cartels’ brazen export of fentanyl across an open border.

Nearly a million Americans have likely died of such overdoses since 2000 — more than double the number of fatalities in World War II.

Given its shell-shocked inner cities and toxic downtowns, America is beginning to resemble mid-19th-century England that sent forces all over its global empire while novelist Charles Dickens chronicled the misery and poverty at the imperial core in London.

Is the Ukrainian war also creating the most dangerous anti-American alliance since World War II?

China is buying cheap Russian oil, while stealthily supplying its weapons.

India, normally a rock-solid democratic ally, keeps buying both banned Russian oil and armaments.

Most of the major countries in South America have not joined the sanctions.

Clients like nuclear North Korea and soon to be nuclear Iran are empowered by overt help from Russia.

NATO member Turkey and once-allied Saudi Arabia appear now friendlier to Iran, friendlier to China, and friendlier to Russia, than they are to America.

In terms of combined oil reserves, nukes, population, area, and GDP, this new loose coalition of apparent anti-Americans seems more powerful than the U.S. and its squabbling friends in Europe.

Why were those now calling for a veritable blank check for Ukraine formerly quiet when the U.S. fled in humiliation from Afghanistan?

Why were they mostly silent when an appeasing President Joe Biden begged Russian President Vladimir Putin at least to spare some U.S. targets on his otherwise extensive anti-American cyberwar hit list?

Or why were they indifferent when Biden said he would have fewer objections if Putin’s anticipated attack on Ukraine would be “minor”?

Or why were they not so eager for confrontation when Putin earlier acquired the Eastern Ukrainian borderlands and Crimea in 2014 in the first place?

Or why so subdued when the U.S. in 2015-16 refused to sell Ukrainian offensive weapons?

Why does the U.S. discount the serial and ascending nuclear threats from Russia, but we remain careful not to antagonize China?

After all, China sent a spy balloon brazenly across the U.S. to surveil and spy on American strategic locations.

And why is the administration so quiet about a likely leak of an engineered deadly COVID-19 virus from a Chinese virology lab that killed 1 million Americans?

These are Ukrainian war-related questions that never seem to be answered — but should be as the carnage rises and the nuclear threshold falls.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX recently launched the first batch of its next-generation Starlink internet satellites that already appear to be in trouble. 

In a Wednesday tweet, Musk said there were “some issues” with “V2 Mini” satellites that were blasted into orbit last month. 

“Lot of new technology in Starlink V2, so we’re experiencing some issues, as expected,” Musk wrote.

The billionaire was responding to a Twitter conversation with some users pointing out “significant” altitude changes of some of the V2 Minis. 

Musk said, “Some sats will be deorbited, others will be tested thoroughly before raising altitude above Space Station.” 

Here’s the thread. 

In a separate tweet, Starlink Insider tweeted a graph showing the decline in altitudes of some of the satellites. 

The V2 Mini sats seem to be collectively lowering their altitude. @planet4589 is this to be expected? Trajectory is certainly uncommon when looking at other Starlink launches. pic.twitter.com/O4iwWFyyHb

— Starlink Insider (@starlinkinsider) March 16, 2023

The Feb. 27 launch of 21 next-generation Starlink satellites was on top of a Falcon 9 rocket. The V2 Minis are intended to expand network capacity as Starlink crossed 1,000,000 active subscribers in December, and some customers complain of slow speeds. 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Amid an increase in reports of squatters taking over people’s homes across the country, one expert warned that the phenomenon is on the rise and noted that removing a squatter could take months.

Real estate lawyer Jim Burling told Fox News on Tuesday that any home that is not occupied for a period of time could be targeted by squatters. If the owner tries to call the police, officers may not be able to do much, and at the same time, using the courts could turn into a lengthy and expensive process, he warned.

“I think it’s a fairly big problem and I think it’s pretty hard to avoid,” Burling, who is vice president of litigation for Pacific Legal Foundation, said. In cases where a property owner is attempting to evict a squatter, generally the court system has to get involved to determine whose paperwork is legitimate, he noted.

“If somebody is living in a home and saying ‘hey, I signed a lease, I’m paying rent, I have a right to be here,’ whether or not that’s true, the police hear that story then they hear a story of somebody who’s not living there and saying ‘this is my place these people don’t belong here,’ the police officer can’t make that legal determination,” Burling said.

He added that it’s not the “job” of the police to do that. “That’s not their bailiwick. If you have that kind of dispute it has to go to court,” he said.

Properties that are most susceptible to attracting squatters are people who have left them vacant due to a family death or foreclosure. Owners have to remain vigilant and keep their properties locked up and secured, Burling remarked.

“If I were a homeowner, I would be really careful about letting my property be vacant for any period of time,” Burling remarked. “I would be very careful about renting it out.”

“The courts are backed up, the civil process takes forever, the squatters won’t show up to court and so it just drags on and in the meantime somebody’s living rent-free for a significant period of time.”

In some places, it could take months to remove a squatter or an evicted tenant, lawyers have said.

Another landlord-tenant lawyer, Michael Zink, told CBS Chicago in a recent interview that “evictions in Chicago—whether it’s about squatters or anything else—are taking approximately six to eight months.”

Squatter cases, he added, have been on the rise in recent years because people know they can live for months rent-free with virtually no consequences. Zink noted that when the police get involved, they have little power.

“The problem that police have is when they show up to a scene like that, they don’t know who is telling the truth,” Zink told the CBS affiliate.

In many areas and states, too, landlords cannot forcibly remove anyone from a property. Only a sheriff or court-sanctioned bailiff can do so after the landlord prevails in court. If a person is proven to have trespassed, police and other law enforcement officers can intervene, however.

There have been reports that landlords and property owners have used so-called “squatter removal services” in some cities, like Detroit, to encourage squatters to leave. In one instance in January, a property owner used such a service to post official-looking notices on the property warning the squatters to leave within 24 hours or else their possessions would be forcefully taken away.

Recent Cases

A Chicago-area family told local media that they’re currently embroiled in a legal fight to evict a man who was described as a “professional squatter” who is now commandeering their deceased mother’s home. After Darthula Young’s mother, who owned a duplex in Chicago’s South Side for decades, died last year, the property was transferred to her family members, they told CBS Chicago.

“On Sept. 23, I got a call from the neighbors to say there’s been a shooting in the building—and when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work,” Young told the channel.

“The person who had been shot in the apartment, this guy named Takito Murray, came back from the hospital and informed us and the police that he now lived there—that he had rights,” she said, adding that Murray “was a professional squatter.”

In another recent instance, squatters allegedly took over a home in Portland, Oregon, and have terrorized residents. Locals last week made a plea in front of the Portland City Council to intervene, KATU reported.

“We feel victimized by the irrefutable safety issues which happen so often,” Elizabeth Adams, who lives next door, said at the meeting. “We have a deep compassion for our homeless, but that doesn’t mean that we should have to live in fear for our safety each and every day.

The much awaited release of the Fed’s latest weekly balance sheet update was released at exactly 4:30pm, and not surprisingly, it showed that in the past week the bank bailout continued if at a less torrid pace.

As of March 22, the Fed’s balance sheet increased by $94.5 billion to $8.734 trillion from $8.639 trillion which in turn was a $297 billion increase from the previous week when the bank crisis started. In total, the Fed’s balance sheet hs increased by $393 billion in the past two weeks, and is fast approaching its all time high of $8.95 trillion one year ago, when QT kicked in and shrank the Fed’s assets by $600 billion.

Looking at the actual reserve components that were provided by the Fed, we find that Fed backstopped facility borrowings were roughly flat around $164 billion, but the composition shifted, as usage of the Discount Window dropped by $42 billion to $110 billion…

… which however was offset almost dollar for dollar by a $42.6 billion increase in usage of the Fed’s brand new Bank Term Funding Program, or BTFP.

Meanwhile, other credit extensions – consisting of Fed loans to bridge banks established by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to resolve SVB and Signature Bank  – rose to $179.8 billion from $142.8 billion the previous week.

Of course, the above only accounted for just under $40BN in reserves, what was the delta?

The answer: a record $60 billion in foreign official Repo (which is also the counterparty limit) under the Fed’s new FIMA repo facility, which means that the offshore scramble for dollars was alive and well, and someone  really needed access to USD. That someone is likely either Credit Suisse or UBS, or some SPV of the Swiss National Bank; of course, we can’t know for sure since the names of counterparties are named. confidential.

The maxing out of the foreign repo is also why the Fed’s USD liquidity swaps only rose to a paltry $587 million in the past week…

… as the real number to focus on is the massive amount of foreign repo usage, which is where the foreign USD scarcity emerged this week.

Meanwhile, with QT still laughably taking place in the background, the Fed’s holdings of TSYs dropped by $3.5 billion to $7.937 trillion.

The question is whether after emergency Fed facilities rose by another $100 billion – a rough proxy of how much deposit drain took place in the week – if this marks the peak for the credit crisis. And while that may have been true until yesterday, it is none other than Janet Yellen herself who sent bank stocks plunging in the past 48 hours with her amateurish comments. In any case, this means that we will need to wait one more week until the next H.4.1 statement to see if the various emergency Fed facilities are declining or if they continue to rise and will eventually be replaced with permanent reserve facilities such as QE, similar to what happened after the 2008 financial crisis.

Finally, while the Fed is flooding the system with emergency reserves, those wondering where these are going should look at the Fed’s reverse repo facility which has soared, as well as money market funds which have been scooping up cash recently, fueled in large part by depositors pulling their money away from US banks.

The amount of money parked at money-market funds climbed to a fresh record in the week through March 22 as banking concerns continued to rock global markets. According to data from the Investment Company Institute, about $117.4 billion poured into US money-market funds in the week through March 22, bringing total assets up to an unprecedented $5.132 trillion, versus the $5.01 trillion in the week to March 15. Inflows over the past two weeks totaled more than $238 billion.

Initially much of that flow was driven by more attractive rates, but concern about the steadiness of some smaller lenders helped boost the trend this month.

“This is consistent with ongoing deposit flight from the banking system as depositors indirectly invest their cash into government securities via money funds and shun bank credit,” said TD Securities strategist Gennadiy Goldberg. “This answers the question of ‘where is the money going once it leaves the banking system?”’

As a result, more cash may remain parked at the Fed’s reverse repurchase agreement facility amid a lack of short-end supply due to ongoing Treasury bill paydowns and Federal Home Loan Banks normalizing issuance. On Thursday, some 99 counterparties parked $2.234 trillion at the RRP, down from $2.28 trillion the prior session, but just shy of 2023 highs.

Finally, looking at our favorite chart showing total reserves vs US market cap, it shows that with reserves rising to $3.425 trillion, the highest since April 2022, US stocks are now badly lagging where the amount of reserves would have them be.

On the other hand, the bank crisis needs to stabilize first and while reserves are being furiously injected into the system, money (in the form of deposit runs) needs to stop entering the reverse repo system (effectively sterilizing reserves), because as the next chart shows, much of the increase in reserves has been offset by a surge in reverse repos.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

For years, President Joe Biden has maintained a Sgt. Schultz defense to allegations that his family has profiteered on influence peddling with foreign countries and companies.

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, Biden maintains that he “knows nothing, nothing” about Hunter Biden’s business deals. He recently doubled down on this defense by even denying that family members received money from foreign sources. He repeated his denial even after the release of financial transfer reports from his own administration showing millions transferred from China. Now, emails have emerged that show that Biden personally helped draft responses to the controversial deals in 2015 when he was Vice President. It also appears that Biden officials like former Biden Communications Director Kate Bedingfield knew of his role as the President continued to deny any involvement.

The National Archives has released emails that show that then-Vice President Joe Biden approved an official statement in December 2015 about Hunter Biden’s position on a Ukrainian energy company’s board.

Biden has denied any knowledge or involvement in these business dealings at least seven times as a presidential candidate and as president.

For years, the media has continued to report President Biden’s repeated claim that “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings.” At the outset, the media only had to suspend any disbelief that the president could fly to China as Vice President with his son on Air Force 2 without discussing his planned business dealings on the trip.

Of course, the emails on the laptop quickly refuted this claim. However, the media buried the laptop story before the election or pushed the false claim that it was fake Russian disinformation.

Some in the media have repeated those denials, including most recently the Associated Press which, in 2022, falsely stated that there was no evidence Biden ever discussed the deals with his son despite an actual audiotape proving that claim to be false.

The audiotape showed President Biden leaving a message for Hunter specifically discussing coverage of those dealings:

“Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you.”

Some of us have written for two years that President Biden’s denial of knowledge is patently false. It was equally evident that the Biden family was selling influence and access. There are emails of Ukrainian and other foreign clients thanking Hunter Biden for arranging meetings with his father. There are photos from dinners and meetings that tie President Biden to these figures, including a 2015 dinner with a group of Hunter Biden’s Russian and Kazakh clients.

People apparently were told to avoid directly referring to President Biden. In one email, Tony Bobulinski, then a business partner of Hunter’s, was instructed by Biden associate James Gilliar not to speak of the former veep’s connection to any transactions: “Don’t mention Joe being involved, it’s only when u [sic] are face to face, I know u [sic] know that but they are paranoid.”

Instead, the emails apparently refer to President Biden with code names such as “Celtic” or “the big guy.” In one, “the big guy” is discussed as possibly receiving a 10 percent cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm; other emails reportedly refer to Hunter Biden paying portions of his father’s expenses and taxes.

Bobulinski has given multiple interviews in which he stated that he met twice with Joe Biden to discuss a business deal in China with CEFC China Energy Co. That would seem obvious evidence. In addition, the New York Post reported on a key email that discussed “the proposed percentage distribution of equity in a company created for a joint venture with CEFC China Energy Co.” That was the email on March 13, 2017 that included references of “10 held by H for the big guy.”

The new emails show that, as early as 2015, Bedingfield told Hunter’s top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin via email that Joe Biden approved a statement regarding Hunter’s board position. Yet, for years, Biden’s communications office repeated his denial of any involvement or knowledge. That stands in contradiction to Bedingfield’s 2015 email acknowledging that “VP signed off on this — will give this quote to reporters in my name shortly.” Bedingfield left the White House in 2023.

The White House has continued the categorical denials. When confronted by Fox News’ Peter Doocy on the transfer records showing millions sent from China, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded:

“Look, I’m just not going to respond to that from here. Look, we have heard from House Republicans for years and years and years how — the inaccuracies and lies when it comes to this issue. And, I don’t even where to begin to even answer that question because, again, it’s been lies and lies and inaccuracy for the past couple of years and I’m just not going to get into it from here.”

The only reason that Biden would even attempt to maintain this clearly false defense is that he could count on a supportive media to blunt any attacks and limit inquiries.

Of course, there is a difference with the Sgt. Schulz defense.

Schultz was harmless and comical. The Biden influence peddling allegation is neither. Despite the striking lack of interest of many in the media, this is about millions of dollars paid to the First Family by foreign sources, including some with foreign intelligence ties.

Influence peddling has long been the favored form of corruption in Washington. While many Democrats repeatedly stress that influence peddling is not criminal, it is corrupt and the Bidens appear to be a class in themselves. Yet, even with the clear contradiction of the President’s repeated statements to the public, Democrats still oppose any investigation into the alleged influence peddling.

What made Sgt. Schultz funny is precisely why the Biden defense is collapsing. The refusal of the media to see what is now in plain view will convince no one. At some point, Democratic leaders will have to recognize the obvious or join the Bidens (and many journalists) in the cast of this theater of the absurd.

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

In Moscow this week, the Chinese and Russian leaders revealed their joint commitment to redesign the global order, an undertaking that has ‘not been seen in 100 years.’

What has just taken place in Moscow is nothing less than a new Yalta, which, incidentally, is in Crimea. But unlike the momentous meeting of US President Franklin Roosevelt, Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in USSR-run Crimea in 1945, this is the first time in arguably five centuries that no political leader from the west is setting the global agenda.

It’s Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin that are now running the multilateral, multipolar show. Western exceptionalists may deploy their crybaby routines as much as they want: nothing will change the spectacular optics, and the underlying substance of this developing world order, especially for the Global South.

What Xi and Putin are setting out to do was explained in detail before their summit, in two Op-Eds penned by the presidents themselves. Like a highly-synchronized Russian ballet, Putin’s vision was laid out in the People’s Daily in China, focusing on a “future-bound partnership,” while Xi’s was published in the Russian Gazette and the RIA Novosti website, focusing on a new chapter in cooperation and common development.

Right from the start of the summit, the speeches by both Xi and Putin drove the NATO crowd into a hysterical frenzy of anger and envy: Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova perfectly captured the mood when she remarked that the west was “foaming at the mouth.”

The front page of the Russian Gazette on Monday was iconic: Putin touring Nazi-free Mariupol, chatting with residents, side by side with Xi’s Op-Ed. That was, in a nutshell, Moscow’s terse response to Washington’s MQ-9 Reaper stunt and the International Criminal Court (ICC) kangaroo court shenanigans. “Foam at the mouth” as much as you like; NATO is in the process of being thoroughly humiliated in Ukraine.

During their first “informal” meeting, Xi and Putin talked for no less than four and a half hours. At the end, Putin personally escorted Xi to his limo. This conversation was the real deal: mapping out the lineaments of multipolarity – which starts with a solution for Ukraine.

Predictably, there were very few leaks from the sherpas, but there was quite a significant one on their “in-depth exchange” on Ukraine. Putin politely stressed he respects China’s position – expressed in Beijing’s 12-point conflict resolution plan, which has been completely rejected by Washington. But the Russian position remains ironclad: demilitarization, Ukrainian neutrality, and enshrining the new facts on the ground.

In parallel, the Russian Foreign Ministry completely ruled out a role for the US, UK, France, and Germany in future Ukraine negotiations: they are not considered neutral mediators.

A multipolar patchwork quilt

The next day was all about business: everything from energy and  “military-technical” cooperation to improving the efficacy of trade and economic corridors running through Eurasia.

Russia already ranks first as a natural gas supplier to China – surpassing Turkmenistan and Qatar – most of it via the 3,000 km Power of Siberia pipeline that runs from Siberia to China’s northeastern Heilongjiang province, launched in December 2019. Negotiations on the Power of Siberia II pipeline via Mongolia are advancing fast.

Sino-Russian cooperation in high-tech will go through the roof: 79 projects at over $165 billion. Everything from liquified natural gas (LNG) to aircraft construction, machine tool construction, space research, agro-industry, and upgraded economic corridors.

The Chinese president explicitly said he wants to link the New Silk Road projects to the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). This BRI-EAEU interpolation is a natural evolution. China has already signed an economic cooperation deal with the EAEU. Russian macroeconomic uber-strategist Sergey Glazyev’s ideas are finally bearing fruit.

And last but not least, there will be a new drive towards mutual settlements in national currencies – and between Asia and Africa, and Latin America. For all practical purposes, Putin endorsed the role of the Chinese yuan as the new trade currency of choice while the complex discussions on a new reserve currency backed by gold and/or commodities proceed.

This joint economic/business offensive ties in with the concerted Russia-China diplomatic offensive to remake vast swathes of West Asia and Africa.

Chinese diplomacy works like the matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls) in terms of delivering subtle messages. It’s far from coincidental that Xi’s trip to Moscow exactly coincides with the 20th anniversary of American ‘Shock and Awe’ and the illegal invasion, occupation, and destruction of Iraq.

In parallel, over 40 delegations from Africa arrived in Moscow a day before Xi to take part in a “Russia-Africa in the Multipolar World” parliamentary conference – a run-up to the second Russia-Africa summit next July.

The area surrounding the Duma looked just like the old Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) days when most of Africa kept very close anti-imperialist relations with the USSR.

Putin chose this exact moment to write off more than $20 billion in African debt.

In West Asia, Russia-China are acting totally in synch. West Asia. The Saudi-Iran rapprochement was actually jump-started by Russia in Baghdad and Oman: it was these negotiations that led to the signing of the deal in Beijing. Moscow is also coordinating the Syria-Turkiye rapprochement discussions. Russian diplomacy with Iran – now under strategic partnership status – is kept on a separate track.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Chinese intelligence, via its own investigations, is now fully assured of Putin’s vast popularity across Russia, and even within the country’s political elites. That means conspiracies of the regime-change variety are out of the question. This was fundamental for Xi and the Zhongnanhai’s (China’s central HQ for party and state officials) decision to “bet” on Putin as a trusted partner in the coming years, considering he may run and win the next presidential elections. China is always about continuity.

So the Xi-Putin summit definitively sealed China-Russia as comprehensive strategic partners for the long haul, committed to developing serious geopolitical and geoeconomic competition with declining western hegemons.

This is the new world born in Moscow this week. Putin previously defined it as a new anti-colonial policy. It’s now laid out as a multipolar patchwork quilt. There’s no turning back on the demolition of the remnants of Pax Americana.

‘Changes that haven’t happened in 100 years’

In Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350, Janet Abu-Lughod built a carefully constructed narrative showing the prevailing multipolar order when the West “lagged behind the ‘Orient.’” Later, the West only “pulled ahead because the ‘Orient’ was temporarily in disarray.”

We may be witnessing a similarly historic shift in the making, trespassed by a revival of Confucianism (respect for authority, emphasis on social harmony), the equilibrium inherent to the Tao, and the spiritual power of Eastern Orthodoxy. This is, indeed, a civilizational fight.

Moscow, finally welcoming the first sunny days of Spring, provided this week a larger-than-life illustration of “weeks where decades happen” compared to “decades where nothing happens.”

The two presidents bid farewell in a poignant manner.

Xi: “Now, there are changes that haven’t happened in 100 years. When we are together, we drive these changes.”

Putin: “I agree.”

Xi: “Take care, dear friend.”

Putin: “Have a safe trip.”

Here’s to a new day dawning, from the lands of the Rising Sun to the Eurasian steppes.