9-7-18 Captain James Fanell, a retired senior US Navy intelligence officer who has focused on China’s Navy for 30 years, says: “Across the vast expanse of Oceania, China’s deepening economic and political relationships have paved the way for port leases and maritime construction efforts that serve the PRC’s global power projection vision, and threaten free nations’ security interests,” says Fanell. “It is making a powerful play for this resource-rich, strategically crucial region, from the continent of Australia to the least-populated island nations.”
China has growing geostrategic interests in the region. It is the largest trading partner with Pacific Island countries, with trade totaling US$8.2 billion in 2017.
Beyond its trade interests, Beijing’s enhanced engagement with the region is driven by “its broader diplomatic and strategic interests, reducing Taiwan’s international space, and gaining access to raw materials and natural resources,” says the Commission report, entitled “China’s Engagement in the Pacific Islands: Implications for the United States.”…
Beijing’s strategy for achieving its aims in the Pacific Islands is well-established and predicable, says Fanell. It starts with financial aid, political donations and investment that pave commercial inroads and an increase in Chinese migration to the region. After co-opting government officials, invariably a PLA Navy-related military objective emerges, he says….
Recent media reports suggest China aims to establish a naval base at Vanuatu. While Vanuatu’s government and Chinese officials deny such plans exist, Beijing initially denied it had plans for the military base it has since established at Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. The base, a 200-acre heavily-fortified facility dubbed by at least one analyst as a “mega-fortress”, became operational in August 2017 and is China’s first such overseas facility. Described by Beijing as a “logistics base”, the strategic facility is in reality a launch pad that allows PLA Navy and Marine forces assigned there to conduct a wide range of military operations in the region….
Spanning across Oceania, China is also showing deep interest in the Federated States of Micronesia, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Samoa. Each island nation, analysts say, provides potential military logistics and intelligence facility sites….
Ultimately China seeks to block US influence and military capabilities in the region, says Fanell, and it is employing so-called “political warfare” to achieve that aim. http://www.atimes.com/article/chinas-plan-for-conquest-of-the-south-pacific/
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Fontanka’s sources say Boshirov was born on April 12, 1978 and registered at a 25-story apartment complex in Moscow on Bolshaya Naberezhnaya Street. In July 2015 he was ticketed and fined twice for traffic violations by the same bailiffs’ department, though the case numbers for these tickets seem to reflect separate departments. …
On social media Boshirov is similarly hard to track down. Accounts created in 2014 with this name are mostly inactive. A Facebook page registered under “Ruslan Boshirov” has just a single friend: a young woman from Ukraine. On Vkontakte, Boshirov indicates that he graduated from the geography department at Moscow State University in 2004.
Fontanka also telephoned several people who live in the apartment building where Boshirov is registered, discovering that the only resident at his supposed address is an elderly woman. Neighbors say they’ve never seen any man enter the apartment, but some suggested that she might have a son who never visits….
Fontanka was able to find out even less about Petrov. A man with his name and birthdate is registered as a staff member at the federal state unitary enterprise “MicroGen,” Russia’s biggest producer of immunological products. MicroGen operates nine branches nationwide, working mostly with vaccines, and reports to Russia's Health Ministry. https://meduza.io/en/feature/2018/09/05/russian-journalists-dig-up-information-about-the-secret-agents-who-allegedly-carried-out-the-salisbury-nerve-agent-attack
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