We’re told all-too-often that China has taken over the world - or at least, it’s poised to. Indeed, a 2002 UBS survey found that 57% of global investors predicted China will replace the U.S. as the world’s biggest superpower by 2030. From Donald Trump to Donald Tusk, an underlying sense of anxiety and resignation over China’s displacement of Western power has bubbled under the surface of policymaking for decades. China isn’t going to do quite as well as it may seem, post-pandemic. Sure, it had an enviable bounce back from pandemic-related contractions in the first quarter of 2020. But, more importantly, there was no corresponding return in their birth rate. If they’re going to succeed as the pre-eminent world power, that’s a serious hurdle to overcome. Data released by China’s Ministry of Public Security on Feb. 10 indicated a 15% decline in births last year. The dip is, in part, a reflection of the lasting legacies of tight fertility controls largely loosened in 2015 and the hardline coronavirus restrictions. Back then, at the risk of losing government homes or jobs, women were forcibly sterilized. Traditional values that favored male children led to the mass abandonment or infanticide of female babies. Hundred of millions of forced abortions were performed, sometimes over eight months into pregnancy. The traditional priority placed on bearing more children to ensure care for the elderly was vastly compromised. A 2007 study even found significant links between the gender-ratio imbalance for young adults and male crime rates. In a survey by the Chinese website Sina.com, only 1-in-3 people indicated that they’d have a second child upon the easing of restrictions in 2015.

A new study of veterans’ medical histories published in the journal Science finds that the effectiveness of all three COVID-19 vaccines available in America dramatically dropped as the months wore on - by double-digit levels, in fact. The vaccinations are hardly as effective as billed. Researchers looked through the medical records of 800,000 or so U.S. veterans and discovered that in March, at a time when the delta variant was being bandied about as the next and biggest threat to citizens’ health and safety, both in America and around the world, that the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Johnson &Johnson were about the same in preventative powers - meaning, they were all about equal in their ability to stop COVID-19 infections. Fast-forward six months. The vaccines lost their effectiveness. According to the findings - that is, according to the science - between March and September the two-dose Moderna fell in effectiveness from 89% to 58%. The Pfizer/BioNTech two-dose fell in effectiveness from 87% to 45%. The single-dose Johnson &Johnson fell in effectiveness from 86% to 13%. Factor in natural immunity and a case could be made these vaccines are nearly worthless. “The three vaccines held up better in their ability to prevent COVID-19 deaths, but by July - as the Delta variant began to drive a three-month surge of infections and deaths - the shots’ effectiveness on that score also revealed wide gaps,” The Los Angeles Times wrote. The journal Science reported that the CDC found “protection against hospitalization and death remained high.” But then again, the journal wrote, citing the CDC’s three studies, “Breakthrough infections, illness, hospitalizations and deaths have since continued to emerge in vaccine recipients.”

The new Development Finance Corporation was created by Congress in 2018 as a response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. It finances and de-risks infrastructure and other projects in developing countries. Congress doubled DFC’s funding to $60 billion. A significant improvement but China BRI budget is $2 trillion. China’s BRI deals are usually opaque and often corrupt. These secured loans are also risky: Recipient countries frequently overborrow and risk losing to their Chinese lender valuable national assets. Still, absent an alternative, developing countries accept these “debt trap” deals and get pulled in the Chinese sphere of economic influence. The DFC can become a real alternative to BRI if it partners with sister agencies in Free World countries, like the Interamerican Development Bank, the African Development Bank. Chinese aggressive finance strategy harms the competitiveness of U.S. exporters. It also allows the winning Chinese companies to embed their technology and create a dependency by the recipient country. The State Department asked countries around the world to reject Chinese telecom equipment and select Nokia, Eriksson, or Samsung instead. Speaker Pelosi called it a choice between authoritarianism and democracy. Sen. Tom Cotton said that choosing China would be like asking the KGB to build your phone system during the Cold War. China’s authoritarian government has more resources than the U.S.’ democratic government. But the United States is stronger than China when it engages its private sector and also mobilizes the resources of other Free World governments and their private sectors.

It could be a dialogue to express a willingness to consider the lifting of selective United Nations sanctions imposed in 2017, in return for a halt to fissile material production and a moratorium on all missile launches. Any violation could result in the snapback of the U.N. sanctions. If North Korea is favorably disposed to this U.S. offer, then a formal return to denuclearization talks could be established, at which time both sides can table their respective demands. North Korea knows what the U.S. wants: complete and verifiable dismantlement of all nuclear weapons and facilities. They also know that the issue of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea is a bilateral U.S. - ROK issue and not part of denuclearization talks. In these negotiations, the U.S. would be prepared to address North Korea’s demands: Security assurances, lifting sanctions, a path to normal relations, economic development assistance, peaceful nuclear energy, and a right to put a satellite in orbit. These and other issues have been discussed with North Korea since the 1994 Agreed Framework, the September 2005 Joint Statement of the Six-Party Talks, and the February 2012 Leap Day Agreement. Each failed. The goal should be to get the North back to the negotiation table, pursuing complete and verifiable denuclearization while providing a path for the North to normalize relations with the U.S. and others. An end-of-war declaration could be the beginning of substantive inter-Korean progress and movement toward meaningful denuclearization negotiations that eventually could succeed with patience and creativity. And as negotiations are pursued, with the absence of nuclear tests and missile launches, the possibility of stumbling into an accidental war on the Korean Peninsula will become less likely.

An end-of-war declaration dealing with the Korean Peninsula would be a powerful message from the U.S. to North Korea. It would also confirm that the U.S. is in sync with South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s efforts to resume a dialogue between the two Koreas and the U.S. and North Korea. On October 4, North Korea reactivated the cross-border hotline with the South, following Mr. Moon’s September 21 speech at the United Nations that called for a formal declaration ending the war on the Korean Peninsula and movement toward “reconciliation and cooperation.” This could be the beginning of a substantive and productive inter-Korean dialogue dealing with humanitarian and economic cooperation between the two Koreas. Moon’s summit with President Joe Biden in May 2021 also dealt with the need to improve inter-Korean relations. And there’s no shortage of humanitarian issues that can be pursued, given the dire economic situation in the North. The appearance of Covid-19 in February 2019 contributed to the North’s decision to close its border with the outside world, resulting in significant shortages of food and medicine. In addition to the need for humanitarian cooperation, there are many economic issues that the South could also pursue with the North, like the resumption of tourist visits to Mount Kumgang, reactivating the Kaesong Industrial Complex, and connecting the rail lines between the South and North. These are just some of the many inter-Korean issues the South could and should pursue directly with the North. U.S. willingness to enter a dialogue for an end-of-war declaration with South and North Korea, or also to include China, could be the catalyst for a broader conversation with the North.

When I watch a documentary, I don’t expect to be sickened by a whitewash of the greatest mass murderer of all time. But the Netflix series “How to Become a Tyrant” does just that, glossing over Mao Zedong with a throwaway line. Mao‘s infamous Red Guard hosted “flesh banquets” to feast on the corpses of “class enemies.” An apt metaphor for communism. How can “Tyrant” justify spotlighting Hitler, Stalin, Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, North Korea’s Kims, and Gaddafi for full episodes while devoting mere seconds to this undisputed World Champion of Death, whose Great Leap Forward alone left at least 45 million dead? If that’s not enough to qualify, Mao also marched 50 million through his laogai forced labor camps, slaughtering 70-80 million Chinese in addition to untold minorities (Hmong, Koreans, Mongolians, Manchus, Tibetans, Muslim Uyghurs). Even the USSR recoiled at Mao‘s contempt for human life. Soviet President Andrei Gromyko described a 1958 meeting where Mao sought a nuclear bomb to slaughter U.S. troops. When Premier Nikita Khrushchev told the chairman to cheese it or risk nuclear war, Mao shrugged. “So what if we lose 300 million people? Our women will make it up in a generation.” Because this history isn’t taught, Mao‘s smirking face is worn on t-shirts by Americans who ought to know better. The dead can’t pay for streaming services or movie tickets, so Netflix - long locked out of China - has been cozying up to Beijing with Mandarin-language content. When a juggernaut of Big Tech, Big Media, and Big Business kowtow to China, they insult victims of tyranny.

This summer in Europe, wind and solar power produced less electricity than expected, which meant that utilities had to generate more electricity from natural gas than they had anticipated. That natural gas will, obviously, not be available to heat homes this winter. Of course, what natural gas can be found will cost a lot more for consumers to buy; natural gas prices are up 600% in Europe in October. Consequently, people will now not be able to afford enough heat, are likely to die from the cold. These people are, of course, likely to be the elderly, the poor, the sick. This experience is an excellent example of why solar and wind power cannot be the basis of an industrialized society’s electricity system. When and how much electricity they provide are not determined by the community’s needs or the operators of the electricity grid; the whims of the weather determine them. In short, system operators have no meaningful say in how much generation an electricity system can get from solar and wind power. No matter how much solar and wind capacity a system has, the actual electricity provided by that capacity could at any particular moment be zero. That is why Europe has higher electricity rates than the United States. In Germany, for example, electricity sells for 30 cents/kilowatt-hour, about triple the price of electricity in the United States. Some will talk about batteries. They definitely might help store the excess energy sometimes generated by solar panels and wind turbines. Unfortunately, there are currently enough large-scale batteries in the United States to meet the nation’s electricity needs for about a quarter of a second.

The gas crisis in Europe has added yet another dimension to a global crisis, with many well-known experts predicting that the worst is still to come. Those who question the integrity of mainstream media, might consider using simple logic and the laws of free market economics. My good friend Jack Kemp, the late congressman, explained them in two words: supply and demand. One would assume that any country is free to decide which gas supplier to choose. The suppliers, in turn, must compete to offer the best deal. Not so fast. Members of the European Union must follow a long list of bureaucratic regulations reminiscent of the Soviet Union’s command economy. Today, 27 EU countries must follow rules imposed by a Brussels bureaucracy that has miscalculated by investing a lot of money into closing coal mines and building plenty of wind turbines and other renewable energy sources to fight climate change. Germany made that situation even worse with its decision to phase out nuclear power after the 2011 Fukushima disaster. What the smart boys and girls in EU headquarters did not realize is that a transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources takes time, and the windless weather this summer was perfect proof that rushing the process does not always makes sense. Another huge mistake was to encourage EU member states to move to gas delivery contracts based on the daily spot prices instead of negotiating fixed, long-term contracts. Although Europe could use the promised American LNG, it is locked into long-term contracts mostly with Asian countries. Well, that’s the free market for you.

At present, few governments are likely to cooperate with this blatant attempt to make them accessories to repression, but that could change. And the mere possibility that this could happen represents a risk that will chill travel by businessmen and women, diplomats, journalists, and even vacationers who will never know if they are about to be surrendered to China for having expressed opinions critical of the Chinese Communist regime or its policies. As the meaning of Article 38 and its implications has become clear, many nations worldwide have rescinded or suspended their extradition treaties with China. Australia, Britain, Canada, and the United States were the first to let Beijing know they would not comply with any extradition requests. Other countries have followed. But those making money in China are tacitly accepting Beijing’s right to censor. Last month Marriott quickly apologized when one of its employees “liked” a tweet that referred to Tibet as a country” and promised Beijing they would see to it that “errors like this don’t happen again.” And last week, Twitter began redirecting inquiries about Taiwan to China. As Human Rights Watch summed up, “One can no longer pretend that Chinese suppression of independent voices stops at its borders.” In another day, the world would have laughed Beijing’s tactics off as outrageously unenforceable and an insult to anyone who values freedom. Last fall, in the world we now live in, the United Nations elected China a member in good standing of the UN’s Human Rights Council.

Beijing’s attacks on freedom of speech and the press in Hong Kong created a firestorm of international disgust, which only encouraged Beijing to expand the worldwide attack on their critics. Beijing contends that their 2020 “National Security Law” has extra-territorial “legal” authority to crack down on “criminals” who, for example, “like” a Twitter post critical of Chinese policy. While the new law was initially directed at Chinese critics of the regime’s Hong Kong policy, many believe it can and will be used against anyone who says or writes anything Beijing finds offensive. This fear stems from a new law’s Article 38, which gives Chinese security forces the authority to visit similar punishment on anyone who expresses disagreement with Chinese policies. The language of Article 38 claims jurisdiction in cases arising “outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.” Donald C. Clark, a law professor at George Washington University, said “It is asserting extraterritorial jurisdiction over every person on the planet.” The language of Article 38 is a threat designed to make businessmen, academic experts, and reporters the world over to think twice before criticizing Beijing. It means, for example, that anyone who has expressed any criticism who later travels to China, Hong Kong any nation prepared to do Beijing’s bidding may be turned over to Beijing for arrest, trial, and imprisoned by the regime for statements made in London, New York, or Washington. In cases involving critics who have gotten under Xi Jinping’s skin, it means China might ask other countries to arrest and turn one of their own citizens over to his security forces to be tried for their “crimes” in China.