China’s Targeting of Overseas Chinese for Intelligence, Influence and Drug Trafficking

Posted on July 21, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2018

Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte (L), son of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and the president's son-in-law, Manases Carpio (R), are photographed taking an oath as they attend a senate hearing. Both are raising their right hands.

Davao City Vice Mayor Paolo Duterte (L), son of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, and the president’s son-in-law, Manases Carpio (R), take an oath as they attend a senate hearing in Manila on September 7, 2017.
Paolo Duterte and the president’s son-in-law, Manases Carpio, appeared before the inquiry to deny as “baseless” and “hearsay” allegations linking them to large-scale illegal drugs smuggling. Source: Flickr.

Anders Corr, Ph.D.

Publisher of the Journal of Political Risk

On June 12, Philippine protesters staged coordinated protests against China in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Protest organizer Ago Pedalizo said, “Duterte’s government pursues the ‘sell, sell, sell’ approach to sovereignty as a trade-off to all kickbacks he’ll get from the ‘build, build, build’ economic push of China.” His protest group, Filipino American Human Rights Advocates (FAHRA), charged that “Duterte is beholden to the $15-billion loan with monstrous interest rate and China’s investments in Boracay and Marawi, at the expense of Philippine sovereignty. This is not to mention that China remains to be the premier supplier of illegal drugs to the country through traders that include the son, Paolo Duterte, with his P6 billion shabu [methamphetamine] shipment to Davao.”

Paolo Duterte has denied the allegations. Philippine and Chinese government offices did not reply to requests for comment.

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Alleged Corruption in Mongolia’s Resource Extraction Sector

Posted on July 18, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 7, July 2018

Dump trucks are photographed operating in an open pit at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine.

Dump trucks operate in an open pit at the Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold mine, jointly owned by Rio Tinto Group’s Turquoise Hill Resources Ltd. unit and state-owned Erdenes Oyu Tolgoi LLC, in Khanbogd, the South Gobi desert, Mongolia. Mongolia exported 817,000 tons of copper concentrate in the first half of the year compared with 663,800 tons a year earlier, an increase of 23.1 percent. Source: Flickr.

Indra Tsatsral

Oxford Brooks University

The year is 2008 and Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, still resembles a gritty Soviet satellite state with its deteriorating apartment blocks and a statue of Lenin standing bold. Fast-forward a mere four years later and the apartment blocks have deteriorated further while a dazzling 25-story hotel overlooks the shadow of the recently removed statue. Today, with a plethora of Western companies ranging from luxury brands such as Rolex to the familiar Pizza Hut sprouting all over the city, you will be forgiven for mistaking Ulaanbaatar as one of the Four Asian Tigers. Unlike the Four Asian Tigers, which flourished predominately through industrialisation, however, Mongolia’s rapid ‘development’ is mainly attributed to the country’s colossal mineral wealth.

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Reason, Imagination and Invention in the South Pacific: The Laser Beam Kiwi

Posted on June 16, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018

Three troops in uniform pose with the "Laser Kiwi" flag. A New Zealand flag is visible in the background.

Troops pose with the “Laser Kiwi” flag, submitted to the New Zealand Flag Consideration panel in 2015 by James Gray. Source: Reddit.

Bernard Cadogan, Ph.D.

Foreign Affairs and Diplomatic Advisor to King Tuheitia, the seventh King of the Maori Kiingitanga

Address to the U.K. Defence Academy, Shrivenham, 7^th February 2018

New Zealand is proof that nature does not always abhor, a vacuum. The country is truly, “the last, the loneliest and the loveliest” as Rudyard Kipling declared Auckland to be in his “Song of the Cities”. Strategic systems never tolerate vacuums. They punish confusion and ambivalence. New Zealand is no redoubt, nor is it overlooked.

The intention of this address is to consider New Zealand’s sense of geopolitical reality. Are we proof that the Versailles Conference unassociated Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nation state has been outclassed in the 21st century Pacific? Are we a living fossil ?

Woodrow Wilson envisaged a world in which there would be no assemblages such as empires, nor alliance systems even. Sovereignty-pooling exercises such as the European Union and Mercosur or Caricom would have been anathema to Wilson. They are not an option for us.

When asked at the Versailles Conference, why we had made the effort we did in the Great War, our Prime Minister Bill Massey replied, “we did it for Civilisation”.

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Duterte’s Immigration Agreement with China: Subversion by Numbers

Posted on June 13, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018

Demetrius Cox

Analyst and Consultant

A PLA Air Force (PLAAF) military transport plane (IL-76) is photographed leaving the airstrip.

A PLA Air Force (PLAAF) military transport plane (IL-76) in Davao City on 8 June 2018. Source: Philippine Plane Spotters Group (PPSG).

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

On June 9, 2018 the Philippine Star published an article titled “More than 3 million Chinese allowed entry into Philippines since 2016 — Immigration data”.

In what may become one of the most remarkable subversions in recent history, the article describes how the immigration floodgates have been thrown open by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. With a current national population of 103 million, Duterte has allowed a 3% direct population increase (3+ million) of Chinese immigrants to the Republic of the Philippines in less than three years, which is enough to keep most demographers up at night. And there is no end in sight.

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Trade Strategy is a Proper Part of National Security

Posted on June 10, 2018 by admin

Journal of Political Risk, Vol. 7, No. 6, June 2018

A ship, the Emerald Princess, is photographed crossing the new Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal expansion in Panama City.

Emerald Princess crosses the new Cocoli Locks of the Panama Canal expansion in Panama City. A giant Chinese-chartered freighter nudged its way into the expanded Panama Canal on Sunday to mark the completion of nearly a decade of work forecast to boost global trade. Source: Craig Stanfill via Flickr.

William R. Hawkins

International Economics and National Security Consultant

On June 4, the Koch brothers (Charles and David) announced the launch of a “multi-year, multimillion-dollar” campaign against the tariffs and trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration; especially those levied on China. The billionaire brothers are regularly called “conservatives” because they make large campaign donations to Republican candidates. But they are not conservatives; they are libertarians, a very different breed of cat. And their donations to the GOP are meant to sway the party in their ideological direction, not merely support it. The liberal media tries to tarnish conservatism by placing libertarians on “the Right” even though this is not their intellectual origin. This is done to further the left-wing narrative that “conservatives” are self-interested, greedy individuals who are enemies of organized society and the common good. This is true for libertarians, who doubt the very legitimacy of the nation-state or the “higher” norms of society. Too often they define right and wrong on the basis of whether it turns a profit.

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