War on Chinese Commercial Shipping?

Everyone. This is Shahid Bolson. Welcome to the Middle Nation. This is gonna be another unscripted video because I just happened to come across something, an article that I think is important and informative and revealing in terms of everything that's happening globally and the, strategy of The United States and American multinationals in Asia and the Muslim world. The article is in Nikkei Asia and it talks about the China Shipping Corporation, Limited known as Costco, not Costco, the chain in America, but c o s c o, Costco.

One of the biggest shipping companies in the world. And the article references a report by Jane's Intelligence more or less saying outright that China's commercial shipping companies operate as a kind of halfway military presence, that they provide logistical support to the Chinese navy and so on and so on. They're basically categorizing Chinese commercial shipping vessels as military vessels, as an extension of the Chinese navy. So saying so they're saying that you can no longer really say that China doesn't have a significant navy because it has a significant commercial shipping sector. And those ships, those vessels are basically dual purpose.

Now I want you to understand this in the context of something else. NATO, back in 2007, in a policy paper titled, I think, a grand strategy for the twenty first century or something like that, They coined a term called weapons of finance. They were talking specifically about China at that time. They also talked about what they called rogue aid, meaning even things like the Belt and Road project, commercial investments by China, and loans and relief and financial aid being given by China to countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and so on. They were saying that these could be regarded as aggressive measures by China for domination that that could legally be responded to with military action.

That was NATO's position in 2007. Back at that time, I wrote that if you're looking carefully, if you're reading that carefully, NATO is telling you that foreign direct investment does constitute aggression and domination and conquest. But they were only applying it to what China does. They weren't applying it to what America does. They weren't applying it to what western corporations do.

It's conquest and domination when China does it. When America and Europe does it, it's not. But the standard is the same. They're saying weapons of finance. Yes.

There are weapons of finance. But here, now in 2022, they are now sort of extending this idea to saying that even Chinese commercial vessels, shipping vessels can be categorized as basically dual purpose military vessels. If they can be categorized as military vessels, they can be targeted like military vessels. They're setting up a framework in which Chinese commercial shipments to another country, they can characterize that as a military incursion of maritime territorial space. If they're going to categorize, Chinese commercial vessels, shipping vessels as military, then anytime one of those shipping vessels delivers a shipment, they can say that's a military incursion.

You understand? You see what they're doing? They're setting up a framework where they can actually treat Chinese trade, legal trade, agreed upon trade, they can treat that as military aggression. And they set up the basis for this. Back in 2007, they characterized Chinese aid, Chinese financial aid, Chinese investment, Chinese loans as weapons of finance, abusing financial leverage on, developing nations.

Now that they've set up the basis for that, for that characterization of business as aggression, as essentially military in nature. And, of course, it's much easier for China because most of these are state owned companies. So they are connected to the state, and they do provide some kind of logistical support for the Chinese military. But they are commercial vessels. They are engaged in commercial activity.

But now they're setting up a basis upon which you can characterize commercial activity of China internationally as aggression, Meaning, you can intervene. You can interdict. You can target. You can attack because it's aggression on their part. Chinese trade, Chinese investment can be treated as acts of aggression.

This is diabolical. Just like what I said before about what they said in 2007, they are self confessing that they themselves view investment, foreign direct investment, trade, and multinational corporations and the private sector as instruments of aggression, conquest, and domination. They're just only admitting it when it comes to China. They don't wanna admit that they're doing it. If it's if it's aggression and domination when China does it, it is when you do it too.

But now they're setting up a justification, a rationale for treating commercial activity by China as aggression that can legally be responded to by means of military action. It's very dangerous.