With Wolf Warrior 2 crossing the 5 billion yuan (US$749 million) mark at the mainland Chinese box office on Sunday, analysts see the trend of patriotic military and action films continuing, not only boosting sluggish Chinese movie ticket sales in the second half but also lifting the fortunes of companies that invested in the smash hit.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
China has a clear strategy to control the Pacific, west of Hawaii, and challenge the US for dominance in the eastern Pacific. In 1950, the US articulated its strategy to box in China and the Soviet Union. The first line of defence was based on the First Island Chain, enclosing five seas: Okhotsk, Japan, Yellow, East China and South China. Should the communists break through this chain, the Second Island Chain encloses the west Pacific from the Aleutians, Guam, and down to Darwin in Australia. And should the communists break through this, the defence line becomes Aleutians, Hawaii, and down southward.
China’s strategic ambition to extend its maritime power across the Indian Ocean is hitting severe obstacles in the giant, volatile Pakistani province of Balochistan. Beijing’s priority is to develop the sleepy Baloch fishing port of Gwadar, 300 miles west of Karachi, to project its commercial and naval influence further west. But kidnappings, drive-by shootings and bomb attacks in the past few weeks and months offer a chilling warning that China will have to pay a high price for a deep-water harbour near the mouth of the Persian Gulf.
Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasized the value of being “unpredictable,” and has established a pattern of firing off ill-conceived threats that do make him appear slightly unhinged. His apparent hope is that this sort of behavior will persuade both allies and adversaries will do his bidding, for fear that this irrational and impulsive man will fly off the handle and do something terrible. In other words, Trump appears to subscribe to the so-called madman theory of diplomacy.
India’s main garrison in the Kingdom of Bhutan sits only 13 miles from a disputed border with China. There is a training academy, a military hospital, a golf course — all testament to India’s enduring role defending this tiny Himalayan nation.
Through its first six months, the Trump administration has concentrated on two issues in its relationship with China: North Korea and trade. While it has secured Chinese buy-in for a new diplomatic framework for dialogue, the administration does not appear to have settled on an overarching China strategy. So far, there have been no major speeches or articles by senior foreign affairs officials on China or Asia, with the partial exception of an address by Defense Secretary Mattis in Singapore on regional military issues.
China banned key imports from North Korea starting on Tuesday, choking off one of the isolated nation’s most important sources of foreign currency in response to the latest U.N. sanctions over the country’s nuclear-weapons program.
If China truly does want a peaceful resolution to the escalating nuclear crisis, it should address the two key weaknesses of the double-freeze solution, proposing a detailed, intrusive, and stringent verification regime and committing itself to serve as the principal enforcer of the agreement. China should make it clear that, were North Korea to violate the deal, it would immediately lose all of the protection and support it receives. Now that would be a deterrent.
Words especially matter between societies that poorly understand each other’s motivations and intentions, as do North Korea and the U.S… So whether or not President Trump intended an ultimatum with his statement on Tuesday that North Korea “best not make any more threats to the United States” lest it face “fire and fury like the world has never seen,” it may have serious consequences. North Korea afterward threatened to fire missiles toward Guam. The next move falls to the U.S.
A senior Chinese official’s visit to Nepal next week will highlight the dilemma faced by the Himalayan country amid the ongoing standoff between its two giant neighbours China and India. Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang’s four-day official visit to Kathmandu, starting on August 14, will come at a sensitive time as Beijing and New Delhi are at loggerheads over a protracted military standoff in the Himalayan Doklam plateau.
