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Monday, October 31, 2022

The Liberals finally signal they’re ready to [decouple] from China

The Liberals finally signal they’re ready to [decouple] from China

Finally admitting they've secretly coupled with China for decades

Something long overdue is quietly happening in Canadian foreign affairs. The pivot away from China has begun.

After Prime Minister Justin Trudeau rightly endured years of criticism for being soft on the authoritarian regime in Beijing, members of his cabinet are now making signals that things are going to change.

“What we want is certainly a decoupling: certainly from China, and I would say other regimes in the world which don’t share the same values,” Minister for Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne said in remarks last week in Washington, DC, in front of a gathering of business executives.

“People want to trade with people who, really, share the same values,” Champagne added.

That’s quite something, because if you rewind a few years that sort of talk might have been labelled Trumpian.

These aren’t one-off remarks either. They’re part of a calculated pattern. 

Champagne was in fact echoing themes made in a previous speech by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, which was also given in Washington, on Oct. 11.

Freeland began her remarks by acknowledging that the once high hopes that the rest of the world would transform itself into liberal democracies like Canada have floundered.

“Liberal democracy world-wide has today declined back to 1989 levels, and autocracies have been making a comeback,” Freeland said. “Many, including China, the second most powerful country in the world, have grown both wealthier and more coercive.”

Freeland went on to lay out what she calls a “new economic path” where we lessen our reliance on countries like China and instead see that the good guys stick together: “Going forward, we should design our government procurement and incentive programs with friend-shoring in mind.”

In one of her more pointed comments, Freeland states that “as fall turns to winter, Europe is bracing for a cold and bitter lesson in the strategic folly of economic reliance on countries whose political and moral values are inimical to our own. China’s increasingly aggressive wolf diplomacy has already given many smaller democracies a foretaste of that experience.”

The stuff about the need to bring those smaller democracies into our orbit — like select African and Latin nations — is modern Cold War rhetoric.

This is all a welcome reversal for a government led by a man who notoriously claimed he admired China’s “basic dictatorship” and that had to be dragged kicking and screaming by its Five Eyes intelligence partners to do the right thing and deny Huawei’s bid to join our 5G grid.

But what’s really behind it? Did Trudeau concoct this move by himself? That’s hard to believe. As Jason Kenney pointed out several years ago —and got in trouble for his truth-telling — Trudeau never once as a parliamentarian did anything that even aspired to heavy-lifting on policy matters.

How does a government go from thinking serious foreign policy means you fly around the world singing about feminism and climate change, to offering up meaty stuff like this?

Perhaps this isn’t Trudeau or Freeland’s doing at all. Maybe the Biden administration has simply told them to get with the program. The reason the aforementioned remarks were spoken in Washington, DC — as opposed to at a G8 gathering or the United Nations — could be that they were exercises in telling the Americans what they wanted to hear.

All of the above has been quietly rolled out the past year and a half as Biden’s foreign policy, which is just a revised version of Trump’s policies. In February 2021, not long after taking the oath of office, Biden announced an executive order to bring as much manufacturing back to America as possible.

Earlier this month, an article in the Financial Times complained that “Biden’s broader security-related trade strategy has too strong an element of onshoring for comfort.” Again, these are the sorts of criticisms previously leveled at Trump.

And when Freeland spoke of “friend-shoring”, she was just reiterating a phrase that’s been popularized by Biden administration officials.

Who knows, maybe Trudeau still does harbour some admiration for China. But Canada has no choice as Biden advances, in his own way, Trump’s decoupling from China.

It’ll be interesting to see how the federal Liberals make good on their words. The Conservatives have been calling for a decoupling for a couple of elections now, including pledges to cancel Canada’s membership in China’s global investment bank, which former finance minister Bill Morneau had us join.

There are a lot of creative ideas on the table for how Canada can decouple from China. It looks like the Liberals are now surprisingly open to them.

China-developed business park now open in British Columbia

The Vancouver Logistics Park opened its doors at the end of July in Surrey, British Columbia after years of planning between the Chinese and provincial governments. 

To date, only 80,000 square feet of the facility has been completed but the entire project will be a massive 470,000 square feet centre and will house exhibition arenas, warehouses and business spaces. 

Beijing first proposed the project as part of its global Belt and Road Initiative, which seeks to spread China’s economic power via infrastructure developments and partnerships abroad. 

The development is being completed by World Commerce Valley, a company belonging to Hong-Kong Based Shing Kee Dodown Group. 

Construction first began in 2018 after former BC Liberal premier Christy Clark signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese province of Guangdong. 

Among those who attended the opening ceremonies for the facility were BC Minister of Trade George Chow, chairman of the Canadian Alliance of Chinese Associations Wei Renmin and representatives from various industry and cultural groups. 

The opening comes as tensions between China and Canada continue to escalate and renewed concerns about Chinese foreign interference in Canada’s politics and in the Chinese diaspora community. 

BC-based journalist Victor Ho was recently paid a visit by Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers after he was blacklisted by the Chinese government for opposing the takeover of Hong Kong. 

Ho was placed on a “wanted list” by China after attending a July event in which activists and community leaders announced a Hong Kong “parliament in exile.” 

“How come our government keeps silent so long?” said Ho of Liberal government inaction on foreign interference. 

“They have full responsibility to take care of the safety of citizens because they are elected by the voters, that is you and me.”


















Sunday, October 30, 2022

More on Chinese Racist, Henry Yu

More on Chinese Racist, Henry Yu

[an anonymous submission sent to me for this blog] 

UBC History Professor Henry Yu 

Oct 30 2022



Image result for Henry Yu

I have been watching some YouTube clips on Henry Yu. Is he teaching history ? Do you see the spin ? Did the Chinese build the Canadian railroad ? Only partially did they build the BC portion, non of the rest. Not even did they do half of the work on the BC side. 

According to Yu...White people arrived in Vancouver and witnessed all the Chinese and natives and thought "we must get rid of them" Where did he dig up this [fact] ? He definitely has a vivid imagination ? He sounds like he should be teaching in a mainland China university not a Canadian one. That the Chinese were displaced along with the natives by White people; what utter nonsense. That the Chinese were here first ? This is what he is teaching. The issue that alarms one is that this is the same kind of bogus claim that China has used to crack down and police Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, using the same reasoning, taking  islands away from The Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam  and Japan as well as their claim over the entire nation of Mongolia, using a saying of Genghis Khan and a Chinese emperor this also means that all the lands between western Europe and China are also Chinese.
"Chinese like natives",most don't even know a polite term to call them in Chinese. HUNG FAN is very derogatory. If you want to see for yourself call a Chinese national a WONG FAN with WONG meaning yellow as HUNG means red and FAN means FOREIGN uncivilised barbarian. Did the Chinese write the laws that are largely responsible for why Canada is such a great nation ? He is forgets [or chooses selectively, not to mention] how the Chinese as a rule think of Filipinos, Natives, People of Colour or Caucasians. 

I read a very interesting book, "The Trail Of 1858", documenting the BC Gold Rush. Our first governor deliberately tried to lure non-white immigrants in the hope that they would be more willing to fight the Americans who were flooding into BC and as this is how Britain lost Oregon by Americans flooding into Oregon and then merely assuming Oregon as their own. This is a highly emotive and offensive statement by Henry Yu PhD, that white people arrived by train, the railroad that the Chinese built and saw all the Chinese and Natives about and thought "we must get rid of them", is indeed false. Of all the non-white migrants [excluding the Chinese] that came to BC only a head-tax was put on the Chinese; I find it hard to believe that White Pioneers were intrinsically evil, it most likely had to do with the obvious mentality that is explained in the paragraph below

So therefor by applying his reasoning, stating [a so called fact] that White Americans were flooding in and could very easily takeover but rather to state the obvious that the Chinese were hoping and trying to takeover by flooding their population in as they have in so many places is racist ? In the late 1800's some towns were half Chinese in population. I highly doubt that the Chinese were any less racist than indeed they are now. 
When the Chinese percentage of a population balloons over all others they then reveal their true nature and and surely would have been alarming to the pioneers of said era. 

I find it incredulous to assert that Canadians have ever been seen as racist as the Chinese definitely were then , now, or in any other eras, regardless. 

And yet another fallacy [the tweaking of historical events seems to be Yu's devilishly special talent], that white people came to Vancouver and saw all these Chinese and natives and thought [Yu]" let's get rid of them" The few Chinese that were fortunate to live in Canada did not mix with Canadians as a rule and worked in often laundries, as houseboys etc... I doubt any white person remembers their grandparents as being so racist that they would have thought "let's get rid of them" if they saw some Chinese in Canada. What I am certain is that Henry Yu's deceitful agenda is to make Chinese a founding culture of Canada with equal status with English and French because there were some fortunate individuals living here during the gold rush and later doing some of the labour work in the one province British Columbia. If Canada is founded by Chinese then it is a Chinese province that must be returned to China as Taiwan Tibet Mongolia Manchuria and Russia as Genghis Khan is claimed to be a Chinese leader in Chinese history books now. Chinese think in the long term and as the Tibetans were being genocided since their being taken over.

VANCOUVER IS A EUROPEAN CREATION
Noticeable as their role was in Vancouver, the Chinese played a microscopic role in Canada`s history. In 1901, 96 percent of the Canadian population was European in origin; there were only 17, 043 Chinese immigrants (born outside Canada) relative to a population of 5.3 million. Vancouver, with the highest Chinese proportion throughout Canada’s history, was virtually a white European city from its beginnings in the 1870s to the 1980s. In the 1950s, when the city had been fully developed into a metropolis, the British accounted for about 75 percent of the population, and other Europeans accounted for about 18 percent, whereas the Asian proportion (Chinese and Japanese) accounting for only 3 percent. Patricia Roy's Vancouver, An Illustrated History (1980), exhibits a city that was overwhelmingly British in its architectural landscape, notwithstanding its Chinatown and Little Tokyo. All the major landmarks were British: the Post Office, built 1905-1910; Dominion Trust, the Canadian Pacific Railway station; Canadian Bank of Commerce; the Strand Theater and Birks Building, with their sidewalk canopies in 1933; the Tudor revival style homes in Shaughnessy Heights in the 1920s.

8 The sports, the education, the legal system -- every institution was British. The Founding Fathers of Vancouver, the Mayors, the magistrates, the school trustees, the chief constables, the physicians, the presidents of the Board of Trade were all British descendents.

Now Professor Henry Yu is calling for a much higher percentage of chinese educators to reflect the higher percentage of chinese students now enjoying the benefits of living in Canada and our education system. Henry Yu though enjoying the benefits of living in Canada and the benefits being employed by one of Canada's prestigious universities is allowed to teach outright falsehoods and half truths. If our education system is taken over by his fellow Chee Gong Tong brothers then how many falsehoods would they influence students with ? This is what I believe is their aim in asking for a much higher percentage of Chinese school administrators and teachers. The Chinese think in the very long term. It does seem obvious to me that Professor Henry Yu is trying to lay a false claim to be used later to justify moves contrary to the best interests of non Chinese Canadians.

Can you imagine a white person talking about white persecution as this Henry Yu talks about Chinese persecution by whites ? Even a Klansman or a Nazi would tell him to shut up. If racism is the issue then why is there no mention of Chinese persecution of Mongols in Mongolia ,Tibetans in Tibet ,Polynesians in Taiwan etc.... ? Henry Yu is obviously a dangerous fanatic. Does white treatment of Chinese at any time compare to the treatment of Indonesian maids in Hong Kong today ? Many are working 7 days a week in spite of the law demanding they get one day off a week. One woman beat her Indonesian maid with a stick until she was hospitalized with broken bones and only got a 500 HK$ fine [ approximately 80 C$ ] . I read the entire 1996 edition of The Rough Guide To China [ approximately 1,200 pages and in at least two provinces the governor ordered ALL foreigners killed including woman and children and they were. How is it that Professor Henry Yu doesn't feel this is worth mentioning ? Have Canadians ever done this to Chinese ? If you don't believe that Chinese men are far more racist than whites then learn Chinese. Sidney Lau has a superb series of books for learning Cantonese. I will warn you though that they will try to get some people to keep an eye on you as they will be worried about any Canadian finding out about their many FAN QING FU MING activities against Canada and Canadians. Filipinos are coming to Canada now and I don't hear any of them complaining about how evil white people are ? They like us and try to be Canadians and most Canadians including me like them too. They don't get alarmed that I speak Tagalog as most Chinese men do that I speak Chinese.

The reason that Chinese were excluded is that one doesn't need to understand their oaths and rituals and that in these oaths and rituals the QING refer to the non people who let them immigrate. FAN QING FU MING means overturn- FAN the uncivilized FOREIGN barbarians- QING and it is common knowledge that FU MING means support Chinese. Chinese immigrants know that it is the goal of many chinese to take over. Ask a Malaysian or a Thai how they like being taken over by Chinese.It is a very safe bet I believe that this UBC history professor Henry Yu is a member of a tong [ the Chee Gong Tong that is ] which has FAN QING FU MING among it's oaths and rituals and this tong also includes all top triad members all over the world as are top Chinese espionage employees, top chinese military [ including top chinese Canadian officers enjoying the benefits of being in the Canadian military while being sworn brothers of top Chinese military personnel ], top leaders of other tongs, top chinese politicians [ including Canadain Chinese politicians enjoying the benefits of living in Canada with Canadians ] ,top chinese police all over the world etc.... Kill the Qing destroy the Qing, exterminate the Qing etc... is also in the along with FAN QING FU MING. I have read that UBC professor Henry Yu is wants higher Chinese immigration to Canada to atone for the head tax which did prevent many Chinese from coming here. Now is it simply coincidence that one of the ways Chinese uses to take over nations is to flood a country with Chinese citizens ? If white people are such inherently evil white supremists here then why isn't he encouraging Chinese in Canada to get on refugee boats and flee Canada ? I have not seen him complaining once about the ONE BILLION DOLLARS that Canada loses per month to Chinese spying. I don't see him talking about how CSIS has found that Chinese Canadiscams will spy for China for free if asked and that Chinese Intelligence agencies don't even expect to have to pay a Canadian Chinese to spy for them against Canada and Canadians. As Henry Yu frequently mentions white supremacists are not ALL those who take oaths and rituals which include FAN QING FU MING not Chinese supremacists and sworn enemies of Canada and Canadians ? Being a member of this tong not only makes him a sworn brother of all top chinese mafia [ triads ] all over the world but also Chinese intelligence agencies,top Chinese military,top Chinese government,top Chinese politicians, top Chinese businessmen etc...

Don't be fooled by humble behaviour. If one reads The Asian Mind Game http://www.amazon.com/The-Asian-Mind-Ga ... 0892563524

you will discover that Chinese get applauded for behaving in different manners to decieve the enemy. China's top heroin smuggler [ a trillionaire ] behaves as though he is a meek little elderly man. In reality the non chinese wife of a highly connected Chinese man told me that her husband says that this man is far more vicious that Stanley Ho the man who used to have a monopoly on the gambling in Macau. The Asian Mind Game is a must read for anybody doing business with Chinese.

For a good basic understanding of Chinese history and the Chinese business empire I recommend Lords Of The Rim by Sterling Seagravehttp://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1277 ... You will get a good idea of how Chinese cooperate together to take over the economies of nations and of what a merciless culture they come from. 



Here is a paragraph from pages 243-244 in Lords Of The Rim 2010 China's Renaissance. 
General Chen Yi's henchmen, including Mainland gangsters, engaged in wholesale extortion, kidnapping, embezzlement, and black marketeering. Any Taiwanese who dared to complain was branded a communist and a traitor, his property was expropriated, and he was clapped in jail. In a few months, Taiwan was ruined. Food ran out, cholera and bubonic plague struck. Despite their fear , people began to protest. On February 28, 1947, KMT soldiers beat a street vendor. When an angry crowd gathered, the soldiers shot them down, touching off riots that escalated into island-wide rebellion and demands for self-rule. Buying time General Chen Yi began negotiations, while KMT reinforcements poured over from the mainland. Fifty thousand troops were unleashed against the civilian population. All doctors, lawyers, journalists, teachers, and students were rounded up and shot, wiping out a generation of leaders. Mass executions took place all over the place everywhere. An assistant US Navy attaché saw civilians "bayoneted ... without provocation ... students tied together, being driven to the execution grounds. ... One foreigner counted more than thirty young bodies in students uniforms lying along a roadside east of Taipei; they had had their noses and ears slit or hacked off, and many had been castrated. Two students were beheaded near my front gate." More than 50,000 civilians were slain, none of them "aboriginals" Compared to the 1989 crackdown at Tiananmen, this was a major bloodbath. Yet there was no great international outcry against the KMT.

If a business owner becomes fairly successful he or she can expect a visit from a triad offering protection. If he or she refuses then the business owner will get a threat and if he or she still refuses then a worker or manager etc... will be beaten, the next time the owner will get beaten and if the owner still refuses then the owner will get killed. Do whites this to Chinese immigrants ? Chinese execute far more people than the rest of the world combined. Often using mobile execution vans and from two reliable sources they often use air to euthanize. These people are killed for organ harvesting, often without trial. I was told that they use air and refuse the doctors to use anesthetics. It's more cost effective I suppose.

During the Chinese civil war both sides ate prisoners of war. [ The Rough Guide To China 1996 edition ] Did we ever do this to Chinese ? How come Henry Yu doesn't feel the need to teach this historical fact. 

Speaking two Chinese languages I see the huge number of Chinese everyday in Vancouver who don't speak English at all. I often ask them how they came to Canada and very often they had a good looking daughter who married a Chinese Canadian man who then was able to get them in. I was offered 30,000 Canadian dollars about 20 years ago to do a scam marriage to get a Chinese family in. Chinese who have no loyalty to Canada and whose loyalty is to China naturally don't have a problem with doing this. I was told   almost 20 years ago that I could have pressed for more money back then. I wouldn't be surprised if the money now to do this scam is huge. Our citizenship is a huge industry for the triads and it appears that Henry Yu is helping them with his claims that Chinese should be a founding language of Canada. This false claim of Henry Yu isn't simply about giving Chinese language better representation. Prime Minister Harper has made it significantly more difficult for immigrants to come to Canada if they don't speak English or French which must be cutting into the profits of the triads Canadian citizenship industry and the Chinese governments efforts to flood us with their excess people in hopes that these immigrants can take us over.The Chinese government also is in on this industry as overseas communities are seen by them as their fifth columns/ trojan horses.

Now why is it that Henry Yu has no interest in righting this historical wrong? Does anything that white Canadians have done compare to the countless other similar Chinese wrongs? If white Canadians is the past and colonial mentality and Chinese controlling Canada is the future is this what non Chinese Canadians deserve for our allowing Chinese to flood in in the numbers that Henry Yu would like to see ? 
It should also be kept in mind that though UBC history professor Henry Yu constantly carries on about white racism in Canada surely he must know that while he enjoys a far better salary and is treated far better at a Canadian university than he would if his dream came true of Chinese taking over Canada. White and other non Chinese university professors at Chinese universities have many people watching them at all times for things to use against them which Henry Yu also surely knows yet there is no comments from him on this fact. If Canada is so racist then why is it that Vancouver has a Chinese police chief ? No city in China would even allow a non Chinese to be a police chief. It also has occurred to me that these same people that are enjoying all the benefits of living in Canada who whine about wrongs they believe white people are responsible for and have absolutely nothing good to say about white people yet even though they are free to leave this land and people they believe mistreats them so horribly they do not want to leave and encourage us to allow more of their countrymen to come to Canada. The reason that they have nothing good to say about us is because they don't like us and often hate us. Do we really need more people who hate us and support Chinese taking us over ?

China’s Productive Capacity Is Starting To Slip Away To India

 China’s Productive Capacity Is Starting To Slip Away To India

It would seem that India along with other Asian countries like Vietnam has benefited from manufacturers moving out of China. China’s productive capacity is starting to slip away when compared to India.


According to a recent Caixin study, continuing lockdowns in China are not aiding the nation’s ongoing, decade-long production migration.

According to the paper, upheavals in Covid policy, growing labor prices, and escalating trade tensions between the U.S. and China have all contributed to the exodus from Asia, a region that is a production powerhouse.

Due to cheap labor and increasing local demand, Southeast Asia and India are vying to replace China. This is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Made in India” campaign and India’s political goals.

As an illustration, Apple announced earlier this year that it has switched production of the iPhone 13 from Foxconn in Taiwan to a plant in India. The research states that, like other smartphone manufacturers, it has incentives for both domestic and foreign sales:In India, Chinese smartphone makers set up factories aiming at the huge domestic market. With 1.4 billion people — almost as many as in China — and a high proportion of young people, India has attracted Chinese brands including Xiaomi, Meizu, Vivo and Oppo to build factories. Many Chinese phone part makers have also set up factories there. Now Chinese brands account for nearly two-thirds of India’s smartphone market.

However, the Caixin article points out that China still has strengths, including a sizable local market, decades of manufacturing infrastructure, and experience. And even while China’s economy has not yet experienced any significant aftershocks, the trend is unfavorable for the nation.


The departure from China, according to Li Xingqian, director general of the Ministry of Commerce’s Foreign Trade Department, was “in line with the law of economics.”

According to the data, exports in the nation increased by 16.9% in May, rising from 3.9 percent in April. In May, the nation’s trade surplus totaled $78.76 billion.

The report stated that export orders for delivery in June and July, typically the prime season for booking goods for the back-to-school and holiday seasons, “export orders for delivery in June and July, usually the peak season for booking goods for the back-to-school and holiday seasons, didn’t come in as expected,” due to the weak demand in developed nations. Falling freight prices were an indication of this sluggish demand.


It might take Americans till the end of this year to use up supplies that were brought forward from the previous year.

President Joe Biden has also stated that he is thinking about removing tariffs on $350 billion worth of Chinese goods per year. However, his government still appears divided on the issue, and no speedy decision is anticipated.


The research said unequivocally that China continues to be “the world’s factory” and that this is not expected to alter any time soon:

Neither Southeast Asia nor India can replace China as the global manufacturing hub in the near future as they are mainly engaged in labor-intensive and low value-added manufacturing, several foreign trade participants told Caixin. They also face problems such as incomplete industrial chains and low labor efficiency to varying degrees, experts said.

To foreign companies, China is not only a manufacturing base but also a huge market, said He Xiaoqing, president of consulting firm Kearney Greater China. In 2020, global companies had $1.4 trillion of domestic sales, far more than their exports of $900 billion, showing the attractiveness of China’s local market, He said.

Along with India, Vietnam has benefited from manufacturers moving out of China. For the first five months of this year, imports for the nation increased by 16.7%, according to figures.

Textiles, furniture, and low-end consumer electronics assembly comprise the majority of the output that is shifting to Southeast Asia, according to the report.

China is using a stealth fleet of fishing boats and ferries to boost its naval power, say military experts

 

China is using a stealth fleet of fishing boats and ferries to boost its naval power, say military experts


An aerial photo shows nearly 1,000 fishing boats crossing the Xiangshan Port cross-Sea Bridge on their way to the East China Sea to start fishing in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, Sept 16, 2022
An aerial photo shows nearly 1,000 fishing boats crossing the Xiangshan Port cross-Sea Bridge on their way to the East China Sea to start fishing in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, China, Sept 16, 2022
  • China is utilizing a range of civilian ships to bolster its navy resources, AP reports.

  • China's rapid naval expansion — both in size and in activity — has alarmed rivals.

  • The growth project is happening in tandem with increasing military activities in the waters aoround Taiwan.

China is utilizing a range of civilian ships to bolster its naval power, AP reports.

The country already boasted the biggest navy in the world by ship count and launched its first home-grown aircraft carrier in June. 

But a fleet of scientific ships, fishing boats, and ocean ferries also offer a military dimension.

Gregory Poling, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, told AP that in the hotly contested Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Chinese authorities pay trawlers large sums of money, more than they can make through fishing, to anchor for at least 280 days a year to enforce Beijing's claim on the islands.

He said there are about 300 to 400 vessels deployed there at any given time.

"China is able to use nominally civilian vessels that are clearly state-directed, state paid to eat away the sovereignty of its neighbors, but then plausibly deny that the state is responsible," Poling told AP.

Poling added that the use of civilian vessels for military purposes complicates military interactions.

"You don't want to treat every Chinese fishing boat as if it were an armed combatant, but, in fact, some of them may well be armed combatants," Poling said.

This growth project is happening in tandem with increasing military activities around Taiwan. 

Chinese authorities have commanded civilian fishing trawlers for military purposes for decades. Still, they have rapidly increased the numbers recently with the creation of a "Spratly Backbone Fleet," according to AP.

China has also launched ships for ostensibly civilian purposes that could potentially be converted to military use quickly.

All ferries built in China since 2016 must be able to accommodate tanks and military vehicles, according to Mike Dahm, a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer who has written on the topic for the U.S. Naval War College China Maritime Studies Institute, per AP.

In June, it was reported that China had launched the world's first crewless drone carrier that uses artificial intelligence to navigate autonomously in open water.

Beijing officially described it as a maritime research tool, but some experts have said the ship has the potential to be used as a military vessel.

China's rapid naval expansion — both in size and in activity — has alarmed rivals and been closely watched by the U.S. military, chiefly the ships and aircraft of the US Navy's Japan-based 7th Fleet.

Insider's Chris Woody recently reported that US Navy ships are operating close to Chinese warships in the Western Pacific and gathering intelligence on China's navy, but US officials worry that rising tensions could lead to riskier encounters at sea.