Not really tied. They seem quite happy about making money.
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Exactly. Not many white Christian European looking fellas in trouble there.
Big pushback … not.
And then a bigger threat- to send even more Chinese vaccine to Ukraine.
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India is Taiwan’s biggest ally right now.
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The laughable assumption in this whole case was that HSBC was shocked, shocked to learn that Huawei had set up a separate company to deal with Iran.
The US accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom to sell equipment to Iran in violation of US sanctions. It says Meng, 48, committed fraud by misleading HSBC about the company’s business dealings in Iran.
But Meng’s legal team argue that documents from HSBC show that Huawei was open about its links to Skycom. In a statement, Huawei Canada said: “These documents consisting of emails and other HSBC records show there is no evidence of fraud on HSBC.
“They show that Huawei’s control over Skycom was not kept from senior HSBC executives, that the continuing nature of Skycom’s business with Huawei in Iran was not kept from HSBC executives and that internal HSBC risk assessments were made based on knowledge of the true facts”.
The laughable fact of the matter is that we think and allow governments of the world to pretend, that they do anything about money laundering. Entire economies like Switzerland, Ireland, Singapore, Panama, HK, Liechtenstein survive on money laundering - the only reason companies exist there is to launder money. Why shouldn’t Iran and China do it?
But countries like Singapore are rated AAA+ by regulatory authorities 
because they’ve legalized it for themselves. Very convenient.
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well, there are a few gross generalisations in there, but I will have some popcorn and see what the rest of the peanut gallery have to say…
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Generalised sure, but baiscally true…
I only disagree with why wouldnt iran and china do it. cause its bad, mkay?
doing bad shit shouldnt justify others doing it as well. This retarded mentality is what is getting our planet in all kinds of trouble.
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LKY remarked years ago that China’s overarching foreign policy is “divide and conquer” - to deal with other countries strictly on an individual basis and ensure that they never form powerful alliances.
Seems like that strategy is still paying dividends.
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What they’re doing in the South China Sea. They refuse any collective talks on the issues and insist on one-on-one talks with weaker countries.
No one stops the “weaker”‘countries from coming together, forming a union and saying they’ll only discuss as a group.
*except china
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China can strong arm individual countries sure. If Taiwan Japan Korea Philippines Vietnam Singapore together tell China to FU, you can bet China will back down.
Sure. Japan, maybe, if they think America has their back; Vietnam, except they’re too close to the line of fire; South Korea needs help in reining in North Korea; Philippines thinks they’re better off doing deal; Singapore is fairly sympathetic to Big Brother anyway; nobody even recognises Taiwan.
If the USA isn’t front and center taking the heat, no-one will stand up.
Well US is too busy making itself great again. It won’t have influence in Asia in the decades to come. Asia needs a new leader.
All hail Brunei!
Surprise, surprise- China’s lending is driven by political considerations and are more unfavorable than other sources (though more favorable to those local politicians who can pocket a greater share with less scrutiny).
The study assembled a dataset of 100 debt contracts, including borrowers in 24 countries and amounting to $36.6 billion, out of a universe of some 2,000 contracts over the last 20 years. They found that China tends to employ a standardized set of loan contracts that have a series of commonalities. The standardized contracts they study included extensive confidentiality clauses, reducing transparency and making study difficult. These contracts shroud China’s lending practices in a cloak of confidentiality, making it difficult for evaluators and monitoring agencies to get a good sense of how the loans perform. The contracts require different treatment for Chinese debts during periods of debt restructuring; Chinese debts have preference over other kinds of debt even when the international community deems it necessary to come to agreement with a government that has become over indebted. Finally, China’s contracts have a variety of cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses that enable China to apply pressure to debtors who run into trouble.
People in Pakistan, one of China’s closest allies, starting to protest, too.
The Chinese trawlers, loaded with fish, were taken into custody by the Pakistan Maritime Security Agency (PMSA), which has begun an investigation into their suspicious presence in Gwadar, where China has built a deep-sea port as part of its global belt and road initiative.
Hundreds of fishers have rallied against the Chinese trawlers since last week, accusing them of fishing in Pakistani waters and sending the catch back to China.
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