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Post by Admin on Mar 28, 2016 19:33:23 GMT
HABERMAN: I just had one quick follow-up on what you were saying about the South China Sea. How would you counter that assertiveness over those islands? Among other things, it’s increasingly valuable real estate strategically. Would you be willing to build our own islands there? TRUMP: Well what you have to do – and you have to speak to Japan and other countries, because they’re affected far greater than we are – you understand that – I mean, they’re affected far – I just think the act is so brazen, and it’s so terrible that they would do that without any consultation, without anything, and yet they’ll sell their products to the United States and rebuild China, and frankly, even the islands, I mean, you know, they’ve made so much economic progress because of the United States. And in the meantime we’re becoming a third-world nation. You look at our airports, you look at our roadways, you look at our bridges are falling down. They’re building bridges all over the place, ours are falling down. You know, we’ve rebuilt China. The money they’ve drained out of the United States has rebuilt China. And they’ve done it through monetary manipulation, by devaluations. And very sophisticated. I mean, they’re grand chess players at devaluation. But they’ve done it – SANGER: I think what Maggie was asking was how would you deter their activity. Right now (Crosstalk) – But would you claim some of those reef scenarios to try to build our own military – TRUMP: Perhaps, but we have great economic – and people don’t understand this – but we have tremendous economic power over China. We have tremendous power. And that’s the power of trade. Because they use us as their bank, as their piggy bank, they take – but they don’t have to pay us back. It’s better than a bank because they take money out but then they don’t have to pay us back. SANGER: So you would cut into trade in return – TRUMP: No, I would use trade to negotiate. HABERMAN: Oh, O.K. My last question. Sir, my last – TRUMP: I would use trade to negotiate. Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. Because I don’t want to say I won’t or I will or – do you understand that, David? That’s the problem with our country. A politician would say, ‘Oh I would never go to war,’ or they’d say, ‘Oh I would go to war.’ I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability. You know, if I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’ve said I would or I wouldn’t. I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking. The problem we have is that, maybe because it’s a democracy and maybe because we have to be so open – maybe because you have to say what you have to say in order to get elected – who knows? But I wouldn’t want to say. I wouldn’t want them to know what my real thinking is. But I will tell you this. This is the one aspect I can tell you. I would use trade, absolutely, as a bargaining chip.
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Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2016 19:07:53 GMT
China's Communist Party has a new target in its campaign against pernicious Western cultural influences: April Fool's Day. "The so-called Western April Fool's Day does not conform to Chinese cultural traditions or socialist core values," the party's leading propaganda organ, Xinhua News Agency, said in a brief message on its official microblog Friday. "Hope people won't believe in rumors, start rumors or spread rumors," the message concluded.
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Post by Admin on May 1, 2016 19:05:47 GMT
Citing national interest, the Australian government on Friday blocked a Chinese-led consortium from buying the nation's largest private land holding, a collection of Outback cattle ranches bigger than South Korea. Treasurer Scott Morrison said he was concerned that the land owned by a pioneering dynasty is more than 1 percent of Australia's total land area and 2 percent of agricultural land. He also worried that the land holding was so big that it was difficult for Australian bidders to compete. The refusal to sell to the Chinese-based Dakang Australia Holdings and Australian-listed company Australian Rural Capital is only a preliminary decision and Dakang has until Tuesday to respond. The price tag is 371 million Australian dollars ($284 million). S. Kidman & Co. Ltd. owns 10 cattle ranches, a bull breeding stud and a feed lot covering 101,411 square kilometers (39,155 square miles) in four states. That's an area bigger than South Korea and almost as big as the U.S. state of Virginia. The government in November blocked the first attempt to sell the Adelaide-based company founded by beef baron Sir Sidney Kidman in 1899, and now owned by his descendants.
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Post by Admin on May 23, 2016 18:55:46 GMT
Chinese warplanes, in a dangerous maneuver, intercepted a U.S. Navy patrol plane flying a routine mission over the South China Sea on Tuesday, according to the Pentagon. The incident is the latest in a series of unwelcome encounters between the Chinese military and U.S. military aircraft and ships in the region where China has increasingly asserted claims of sovereignty. It has filled in slivers of land in the sea to build landing strips and has challenged American naval vessels in international water. “Initial reports characterized the incident as unsafe,” according to a Pentagon statement. It occurred in international air space during a routine patrol. Tuesday’s encounter ran counter to the trend over the last year in which Chinese pilots had been flying in “a safe and professional manner,” according to the Pentagon.
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Post by Admin on Jun 4, 2016 18:56:40 GMT
China’s construction workers are legendary for their productivity, assembling everything from modern metropolises to that ancient feat of engineering known as the Great Wall. Now, new satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe shows another locus of Chinese industriousness: the contested waters of the South China Sea. Over the past couple years, Chinese dredgers have transformed spare reefs and rocks in the disputed Spratly archipelago into islands large enough to boast sports fields and airplane runways. For example, Fiery Cross Reef, once just a couple rocks jutting out at high tide, has grown into a 665-acre island with dozens of structures and a 3 km (1.9 mile) runway that can accommodate military jets. The bits of land scattered across the South China Sea are tiny but ownership claims over them are intense. Six governments—that of China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei—have competing claims over the vital waterway through which more than $5 trillion of trade passes each year.
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