Share this page!

Enter URL or ID to Unroll

You can paste full URL like: https://x.com/threadreaderapp/status/1644127596119195649
or just the ID like: 1644127596119195649

How to get URL link on X (Twitter) App

  1. On the Twitter thread, click on or icon on the bottom
  2. Click again on or Share Via icon
  3. Click on Copy Link to Tweet
  4. Paste it above and click "Unroll Thread"!
  5. More info at Twitter Help
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
@RnaudBertrand
Nov 19 • 3 tweets • 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
This is IMMENSELY significant. And confirms Gaza could well prove to be the US's Suez crisis moment.

To "formulate an international action to stop the war on Gaza", Arab-Islamic Foreign Ministers represented by Saudi Arabia say "the first stop will be China" 👇

In other words they now recognize China's legitimity as the leading force for peace here. Meaning we effectively aren't in a US-led world order anymore, in fact they likely now see the US as a disrupter of order...

Let's see how this pans out. I wrote a couple of weeks back something like this could be happening (see next tweet) and it looks like it's slowly materializing.
What I wrote on the 8th of November 👇 Why Gaza could end up being the U.S.’s Suez crisis moment, which looks to be materializing...
Some in the West are predictably dismissive and condescending on this initiative. And who knows, it might indeed lead to nothing... Although I wouldn't be so sure.

And in any case the fact the Muslim world says China is their first port of call is significant in and of itself.
Image
Image

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Arnaud Bertrand

Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @RnaudBertrand

Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Nov 16
There you go, China obviously displeased.

And I suspect simply dumbfounded: "why would you ask us over to improve the relationship and publicly insult us?" It makes no sense.

It's also terrible for the US's image in the world, highlights they just can't do diplomacy anymore.
Blinken obviously immediately understood this 😅
Yes
Read 4 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Nov 13
Macron's list of continuous flip flops on Gaza is due another update after his more recent declarations so here it goes (proving how utterly confusing France's foreign policy has become):

- 12th of October: France bans all pro-Palestinian protests (the French, as they do, don't care and protest anyhow)

- 24th of October: Macron goes to Israel and even propose France joins the fight against Hamas (!)

- 28th of October (4 days later!): France was one of the very rare Western nations that voted the UN resolution for a "humanitarian truce".

- 2nd of October (another 4 days later): Benjamin Haddad, the spokesperson for Macron's party, says he isn't for a ceasefire.

- 11th November: Macron now says he's for a ceasefire and tells the BBC that he "urges Israel to stop" because "there is no reason and no legitimacy [for killing civilians"

- 13th of November (today): Macron now declares he "unequivocally supports Israel and its right to self-defense."

Again, Macron's most singular political strategy is the "en même temps", trying to stand on all sides of all issues at the same time. Resulting in this: France ends up being led on a road to nowhere and no-one understand where it stands.
12th of October, France bans all pro-Palestinian protests
24th of October, in Israel "Macron proposes that the coalition against the Islamic State [which France is also a member of of] can also fight against Hamas"
Read 7 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Sep 25
This is so profoundly true and everyone needs to understand that. This is a 2011 video of James Peck, Professor of History at NYU, author of "Ideal Illusions, How the U.S. Government Co-opted Human Rights" and one of the keenest observers of China in the U.S.

He explains that actually, when it comes to "human rights" in China, Western backing of the various individuals and movements is "a serious mistake".

For instance he makes the stunning claim that before the 1989 Tiananmen events he went to "a soirée" at the American embassy and "it was filled with the people who later became very prominent in Tiananmen." He remarks that the way to understand this is to "imagine a comparable contrast in this country where Americans were busily associating with people in a foreign embassy" and then attempting a revolution...

I have zero doubt in my mind that if China or Russia made interference efforts in the US similar to those the US makes in their countries, the US would undoubtedly become an incredibly more dystopian surveillance and security state than it is today, and much more "authoritarian" than China or Russia have ever been.

In way, this is what the PRC has always been telling the world: "no foreign interference". But we've always doubled down in this profound mistake, which in the end helps absolutely no-one.

We always comes back to the all-important golden rule: "Do not do unto others what you wouldn't like done unto you".
He also had a fantastic response to a halfwit question about human rights in China: "you are speaking in a country [the US] that has the largest prison population in the planet, bigger than China's [...] You sometimes say 'we should follow the American model'. What's the American model? Well, find a continent that only has Indians on it that you can get rid of, develop it, become incredibly wealthy, not have foreign powers on your borders and... have the American model!"
Lastly, and I couldn't agree with this more, he explains it is a "profound misunderstanding" to believe China's market reforms "were possible without the revolution" (i.e. the Mao era).

He also explains that the Western version of recent Chinese totally miss the context in 1949 when "the US [was] on Taiwan, blockading all the major cities on China that were the treaty ports and you have a 100 million people in those ports whose trade had once been with the external world and no longer can China develop in that road. It's gonna have to figure out how to develop, because of that hostility, I think significantly, a kind of revolution that turns deeply inward."
Read 4 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Sep 10
I get asked this all the time, so I am reposting my famous thread of all the top strategic thinkers - from Kissinger to Chomsky - who warned for years that war was coming if we pursued NATO expansion, yet had their advice ignored (which begs the question: why?).
The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia". Image
Then there's Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️ He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that it therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation". He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NATO".

Image
Image
Image
Read 29 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Sep 4
The more I think about it, the more the I realize how huge this news actually is, how big a win it is for China, and how big a loss for the US.

In one simple move, China basically proved that the enormous years-long efforts the US put to destroy both Huawei and the Chinese semiconductor industry have been defeated.

In typical Chinese fashion - words are cheap in China, you prove yourself with deeds - they didn't make any announcements about it. Huawei didn't even communicate on the product launch, the phone just showed up in their store. And that was coincidentally on exactly the same day as the visit of US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who had vowed to "slow China's innovation rate". Talk about symbolism!

People had to look inside the phone to find out it is equipped with Huawei’s in-house Kirin 9000s processor, which is apparently made by Chinese semiconductor firm SMIC using a 2nd generation 7nm-class fabrication process. Less than one year ago, when the US introduced its sweeping set of sanctions against the Chinese semiconductors industry, "experts" vowed it would kill the industry or at least freeze its technological progress at the 28 nm chips China were at back then. Fast forward to now: China can evidently mass-produce 2nd generation 7nm chips entirely indigenously. The iPhone 14 Pro has 4nm chips so China is now almost on par, maybe just 1 or 2 years behind but catching up at an insane speed.

So what has the US managed to do? They've transformed Huawei into an incredibly more resilient company and have made China build an entirely indigenous semiconductors ecosystem, which wasn't the case at all before the sanctions, and which I am sure will prove to be a formidable competitor to other semiconductor companies out there.

Because other countries have been paying attention here. They now know that it's super dangerous to source semiconductors with Western firms as the US won't hesitate to weaponize the industry for geopolitical ends. So they'll turn to Chinese firms...

What about Huawei's new phone? You can absolutely bet Huawei will end up eating a significant market share from Apple - as was the case before the sanctions. Especially in China where patriotic Chinese will undoubtedly rush to buy the phone, now a symbol of China's technological might.

So it's lose, lose, lose for the US. Much more loss than if they hadn't done any of their aggressive actions against Huawei or China's chip sector.

Which again goes to show just how utterly pointless this new "cold war" is. Had the US decided to remain in engagement mode instead of "extreme competition" mode (as they call it), they'd have been much better off.

In a word: hubris.
Image
And this 👇 Of course. For many Western chip-related firms China was 40-50% of their revenue. Let me tell you: their future market share in China isn't looking too good for them right now, and that's the understatement of the century...
And of course I couldn't possibly tweet on this topic and not remind people of this classic "China watcher" take from last October when the US chip sanctions were announced.

Works for the Rhodium group, "an independent research provider combining economic data and policy insight to analyze global trends." He certainly nailed that trend 😂
Image
Read 4 tweets
Arnaud Bertrand Profile picture
Aug 31
Ask yourself why they want to forbid you to travel to Xinjiang...

Because it destroys the narrative - it has to becomes "what you're seeing isn't real" - as argued in this article: "[you] only [see] a Uyghur identity permitted by the Chinese state" 🤦
theguardian.com/world/2023/aug…
It's also incredibly insulting: you're apparently way too stupid to be trusted with your own eyes...

And ironically Orwellian: 'The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.'
You are correct, no restriction. All you need is a standard Chinese tourist visa.
Read 5 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Send Email!

:(