China fishes all hemispheres

11-10-18       

-Malagasy news site 2424.mg. The caption reads ‘Blue Economy = 10-year fishing deal with China.’ Image: 2424.mg.

  Madagascar’s president at the time, Hery Rajaonarimampianina, was in the room when the deal was signed in Beijing on September 5, although he later claimed not to be familiar with it. No draft of the deal has been made public, and its opacity has drawn media attention in the run-up to the presidential election on Wednesday….

  ChihOn the Madagascar side, the Agence Malagasy de Développement Économique et de Promotion d’Entreprises (AMDP) made the deal (perhaps for $2.7 billion—to fish out that area), which the group says was designed to promote the country’s “blue economy.”  But it did so without consulting the Fisheries Ministry, the national environment office or civil-society groups, many of which are now calling for the deal to be scrapped.   http://www.atimes.com/article/fishermen-oppose-2-7-bn-deal-opening-madagascar-to-chinese-fishing/
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11-7-18   To undermine the democratic world order the CCP has blurred the lines between soft and sharp power in political warfare. The Chinese regime has enlisted embassies, businesses, NGOs, organized crime, and even students and exile communities to further ambitions abroad.  Contrary to popular belief, Beijing’s chief foreign-relations objective is a sphere of influence, not commercial gain, let alone a happy get-along-well together.

  “The Hard Edge of Sharp Power: Understanding China’s Influence Operations Abroad” (36 pages), which was published Oct. 25 by the non-partisan Macdonald-Laurier Institute (MLI), an Ottawa, Canada think tank, provides eye-opening examples of China’s sophisticated strategy to destabilize foreign institutions.  Author J. Michael Cole—who is based in Taiwan—also recommends actions that governments can take to fend off attacks that often fall into legal gray areas....Cole wants Canadians and Americans to be aware of “the ideology that lies at the heart of the CCP’s influence operations abroad.” It’s inherently authoritarian and inclined towards censorship and intimidation, affirming the truism that the first victim of war is the truth.       https://www.theepochtimes.com/canadian-think-tank-exposes-vast-chinese-meddling-abroad_2710967.html