On Monday, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a harsh warning to the United States and Europe, asserting Russia and China were becoming more aggressive and threatening the safety of the West.
Stoltenberg stated, “China is investing massively in new weapons. It is coming closer to us, from the Arctic to Africa. … It does not respect fundamental human rights and tries to intimidate other countries.” He said of Russia that it “is deploying more forces in our neighborhood, from the High North to Syria and Libya” and “as a result of the crises in Belarus and Nagorno-Karabakh,” euobserver reported.
The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, added, “We’re seeing both China and Russia making a lot more forays through ships, submarines, as well as overflying boundaries,” continuing that China was inhibiting navigation for commercial ships and purchasing strategic assets in Europe. She asserted, “We see predatory lending, especially on infrastructure, where China has gone into countries to start a building project for that country and then when … the loans couldn’t be paid back, China has taken the infrastructure. We have seen China take over ports throughout Europe.”
Yet Stoltenberg also stated, “China is not our adversary. Its rise presents an important opportunity for our economies and trade. We need to engage with China on issues such as arms control and climate change.”
On November 12, President Trump addressed securities investments financing communist Chinese military companies in an executive order in which he stated:
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is increasingly exploiting United States capital to resource and to enable the development and modernization of its military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses, which continues to allow the PRC to directly threaten the United States homeland and United States forces overseas, including by developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction, advanced conventional weapons, and malicious cyber-enabled actions against the United States and its people. …
I therefore further find that the PRC’s military-industrial complex, by directly supporting the efforts of the PRC’s military, intelligence, and other security apparatuses, constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in substantial part outside the United States, to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. To protect the United States homeland and the American people, I hereby declare a national emergency with respect to this threat.
The order prohibited “any transaction in publicly traded securities, or any securities that are derivative of, or are designed to provide investment exposure to such securities, of any Communist Chinese military company as defined in section 4(a)(i) of this order, by any United States person.”
The order added, “The term ‘Communist Chinese military company’ means any person that the Secretary of Defense has listed as a Communist Chinese military company operating directly or indirectly in the United States or in any of its territories or possessions …”