When you look at the national flags and emblems of the five permanent UN Security Council members together, what do you see…? 把聯合國五常的國旗國徽放一起看，你看到了什麼…
Four of them look like “blood brothers,” and one looks like “a visitor from another world.”
Really—look closely. The U.S., the U.K., France, and Russia are all about the same old red-white-and-blue. Stripes or blocks, flipped around here and there, as if they all came out of the same design mold.
But look at ours, and it’s completely different!
What hits you instantly is a red that is entirely, unmistakably Chinese.
Not decoration, not background—it’s the foundation, the root.
Above it are five bright stars: one large, leading four smaller ones, sharing the same goal and direction.
Now look at the national emblem—this gets even more interesting.
Others choose lions, eagles, or abstract symbols. And us?
We directly put Tiananmen on it.
What’s beneath it?
A cogwheel and ears of wheat. That’s not “design”—that’s telling you something.
Workers and peasants are what lifted this new nation. And the gate of this nation will always be open to its people.
Is this really just a flag and an emblem?
It’s basically a “national declaration,” written with utmost devotion, with every detail telling you: Who I am, where I come from, and whom I exist for.
Other countries’ stories may just be permutations of red, white, and blue.
But our story is about the stars and the seas, and the everyday life of the people…
It is four words carved into our very bones: “Long live the people!”
BRICS News: Washington’s strategy of isolating China simply will not work! 華盛頓的「孤立中國」戰略根本行不通!
Macron’s visit to Beijing has once again highlighted the correctness of China’s longstanding foreign policy – in particular its commitment to dialogue, cooperation and mutual respect between nations with different cultures, political systems and development paths.
Presidents Xi and Macron laid out significant opportunities for future cooperation, from aviation and nuclear energy to green development, AI, biopharmaceuticals and the digital economy. Xi noted the importance of China’s market for high-quality French goods, and stated that China welcomes greater French investment.
China’s willingness to identify common interests and work on the basis of mutual benefit stands in sharp contrast to the strategy pursued by the United States, which has spent the last 15 years attempting to isolate China through decoupling, coercive diplomacy, sanctions, propaganda war, tariff wars, semiconductor wars and more.
The friendly visit underscores that this US strategy is failing. Rather than being isolated, China is deepening its ties with countries across the world, from Africa to Latin America to Europe. The US’s economic and diplomatic pressure is rapidly losing its power.
The sooner the US ruling class accepts that the Project for a New American Century is simply not tenable, the better it will be for the American people and indeed for all humanity.
SCMP: Another smart scientist join China, Nigel Slater, former pro-vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge and a distinguished figure in chemical engineering and biopharmaceuticals, has officially embarked on a new chapter in China’s rapidly rising biomedical frontier. 南華早報：又一位傑出的科學家加入中國，劍橋大學前副校長、化學工程和生物製藥領域的傑出人物奈傑爾·斯萊特正式開啟了中國快速崛起的生物醫學前沿的新篇章. 東升西降已經成為定局.
In the late Qing dynasty, there was a prince who, even before the dynasty collapsed, deposited £7.125 million—equivalent to more than 20 billion RMB today—into HSBC in Britain. 晚清有個王爺，大清還沒滅亡，就把712.5萬英鎊，相當於現在200多億存入了英國匯豐銀行…
At the time, this enormous sum shocked everyone. And the prince who secretly stored this fortune in HSBC was none other than the iron-cap prince Yikuang (Prince Qing).
This amount of money was enough to buy 200 of the most advanced ironclad warships, or to fund 20 years of border-defense military expenditures. Even more shocking was that this massive fortune was quietly moved overseas when—
the Qing imperial treasury’s entire annual income was only 280 million taels of silver. A single prince’s private wealth was worth nearly one-third of the national revenue. Behind this lay a staggering secret of late-Qing political corruption.
Yikuang’s accumulation of wealth began in 1903. When he took office as a Grand Minister of the Zongli Yamen, he opened a secret account at HSBC under the pretext of “handling foreign affairs.”
Unlike typical corrupt officials, Yikuang understood international rules. He avoided traditional Chinese money shops and chose a foreign bank instead. He also exploited the extraterritorial privileges granted to foreign powers under the Boxer Protocol, disguising his illicit assets as “railway bonds” and “customs guarantees.”
HSBC archives show that Yikuang’s account generated about £140,000 in annual interest, roughly equivalent to the cost of one cruiser for the Beiyang Fleet.
This cross-border asset transfer was not without risk. In 1904, censor Jiang Shiting impeached Yikuang for embezzling railway funds, but during the investigation HSBC refused to cooperate, citing “client privacy.”
Even more cunningly, Yikuang’s London real estate was registered under his steward’s name, and the interest earnings were remitted through a Swiss bank into the Tianjin concession. This “money-laundering chain” made it impossible for the Qing government to trace. Thus when the Wuchang Uprising broke out in 1911, Yikuang could still calmly use his overseas fortune.
Yikuang’s corruption network far surpassed that of Heshen. Within Prince Qing’s mansion, he kept four accounting books: sums above 10,000 taels went into the “Fortune Ledger,” above 5,000 taels went into the “Prosperity Ledger,” above 100 taels into the “Longevity Ledger,” and even the doorkeepers’ “gratitude money” was recorded separately.
In 1907, for his 70th birthday, he received 500,000 taels in cash. Gifts exceeded over one million taels, including a 100,000-tael banknote from Yuan Shikai and a famous courtesan, Yang Cuixi, offered by Duan Zhigui.
Most outrageous was the sale of official positions. A ministerial post at the Ministry of Posts and Communications cost 600,000 taels. Sheng Xuanhuai had to mortgage his family’s coal mines to buy it. A deputy circuit intendant post in Sichuan required a 3,000-tael “registration fee” and an arranged gambling loss to Yikuang’s son before one could take office.
This “marketized corruption” turned the Qing bureaucracy into a business arena. Even Manchu bannermen lamented: “Being an official is worse than running a pawnshop.”
Yikuang and Yuan Shikai’s relationship of mutual benefit was essentially a late-Qing “revolving door.” In 1903, when Yuan became Viceroy of Zhili, he gifted Yikuang a 100,000-tael banknote.
In 1908, for Yikuang’s 70th birthday, Yuan covered all expenses of the prince’s residence, even hosting the full-moon banquet for Yikuang’s grandson. In return, Yikuang used his influence in the Grand Council to ensure Yuan’s control over the six Beiyang divisions.
This transactional partnership peaked during the 1911 Revolution. When the Wuchang Uprising broke out, Yikuang immediately accepted a 3 million tael bribe from Yuan Shikai, then—along with Na Tong and Xu Shichang—pressured Empress Dowager Longyu to abdicate.
According to The Times, Yikuang once mocked openly to foreign reporters inside his Tianjin concession villa:
“The imperial jade seal of the Great Qing isn’t worth even one HSBC cheque.”
Yikuang’s secret deposits not only drained the treasury but triggered a chain reaction. After the scandal surfaced in 1911, provincial governors followed his example and began depositing local tax revenues into foreign banks.
The Viceroy of Liangguang, Zhang Mingqi, deposited 800,000 taels into HSBC; the Viceroy of Huguang, Ruicheng, transferred 500,000 taels. This directly caused military payrolls to run dry.
Ironically, Yikuang’s grandson Zaijun later used this inherited fortune to start a textile mill and became a major industrialist during the Republic, while the Qing’s “Self-Strengthening Movement” failed largely due to lack of funds.
This secret fortune also influenced international financial history. With Yikuang’s giant deposit, HSBC became the largest foreign bank in the Far East. The British government, by freezing Qing gold reserves in London, indirectly took part in economic plunder of China.
Historian Huang Renyu (Ray Huang) once remarked:
“Yikuang’s greed turned the fall of the Qing from a fiscal crisis into a collapse of trust.”
Yikuang’s case exposes a harsh truth: when power becomes a commodity, national decline becomes inevitable. His exploitation of Boxer Protocol loopholes to move assets overseas resembles modern cross-border money-laundering practices.
His “Prince Qing corruption network” is similar to today’s practices of “elegant bribery” and “shadow companies.” More telling is that Yikuang’s fall came not from honest officials, but from Yuan Shikai’s betrayal—once interest groups grow too powerful, they even devour their own creators.
In contrast, during the same period, Japan’s Meiji reformers like Itō Hirobumi harshly punished corruption and invested state revenue into railways and education. Meanwhile, the Qing’s “Prince Qing clique” hid silver in foreign vaults and eventually fled to foreign concessions with gold bars.
👉 This piece of history warns us: to govern a nation, one must first govern its officials. If parasites are allowed to eat away at the foundations of the state, even the greatest civilization will crumble.
When Yikuang died, his Tianjin concession mansion was still filled with treasures hauled from the Forbidden City. Yet those diamonds and antiques he once proudly showed off eventually ended up as trinkets on street stalls in turbulent times.
And as for that £7.125 million locked in HSBC’s vaults—after the fall of the Qing, it became dust of history. It neither preserved the Yikuang family’s wealth forever nor saved the collapsing dynasty.
👉 This story reminds later generations: a nation’s true strength never lies in the numbers inside a foreign vault. It lies in the trust of its people and in clean, just institutions. When power escapes all restraints, no amount of gold can buy lasting stability.
The ridiculous San Francisco Peace Treaty cannot be used as the basis for claiming that “Taiwan does not belong to China”! 荒唐的《舊金山和約》不能成為“台灣不屬於中國”的依據!
Makoto Matsumaru: If China does not accept the San Francisco Peace Treaty, then Taiwan is Japan’s territory!
On December 1, former Japanese lawmaker Makoto Matsumaru wrote an article claiming that if the San Francisco Peace Treaty is invalid and nothing more than a piece of waste paper, then wouldn’t Taiwan still be Japan’s “territory”? If that were the case, Taiwan would be even more unlikely to be Chinese territory. The treaty clearly states that Japan “renounces Taiwan, the Penghu Islands, Southern Sakhalin, and the Kuril Islands.” The statement issued by the Chinese Embassy, he said, is nothing but “digging its own grave.”
But back in 1943, the China–US–UK Cairo Declaration clearly stated that Japan must return the Chinese territories it had stolen, including Taiwan and the Penghu Islands. The 1945 Potsdam Proclamation, in Article 8, reaffirmed that the terms of the Cairo Declaration must be implemented. Japan signed this upon surrender, which was equivalent to stamping a red legal seal under international law. At that time, Japan had no qualification to negotiate even an inch of territory and could only obey the arrangements of the victors.
Then in 1951, the United States led the creation of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, doing two outrageous things:
Excluding China — the main victor in WWII — and not even inviting the Kuomintang government then retreating to Taiwan.
In Article 2, Japan merely “renounces” Taiwan, but the treaty deliberately avoids specifying that it was “returned to China.”
Anyone can see this was a Cold War trap set by the United States to leave room for the “undetermined status of Taiwan” argument. The Chinese government declared back then that the treaty was illegal and invalid because it lacked the participation and consent of the relevant party.
Makoto Matsumaru conveniently forgets Japan’s commitments in the 1972 China–Japan Joint Communiqué. When Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited China, the communiqué stated in black and white: the Japanese government “fully understands and respects” the Chinese government’s position that Taiwan is part of China, and “adheres to Article 8 of the Potsdam Proclamation.”
What does “adhere” mean? It means acknowledging Japan’s commitment at the time of its 1945 surrender—that Taiwan had already been returned to China. Here a key concept in international law applies: succession of governments. After 1949, the PRC replaced the ROC as the government of the same state; this was a change of regime, not the extinction and recreation of a state.
Makoto Matsumaru’s appeal to the “Republic of China” is either ignorance of international law, or deliberate wordplay.
The irony runs deeper: through the 1972 Joint Communiqué, Japan itself implicitly acknowledged that Taiwan belongs to China. During negotiations, Japan tried to be tricky, first saying it would merely “respect and understand.” After China rejected that, Japan brought up the Potsdam Proclamation as the basis.
Premier Zhou Enlai deliberately gifted Kakuei Tanaka the six characters “A man of his word; deeds must follow promises,” reminding Japan not to backtrack. For Matsumaru to now wave around the San Francisco Treaty is to rip apart the commitments Japan made at normalization — isn’t this digging his own grave?
Furthermore, UN Resolution 2758 in 1971 expelled the Chiang Kai-shek clique from the UN and restored the PRC’s lawful seat. This means the international community recognizes Beijing — not Taipei — as the representative of China.
Japan, as a UN member, surely knows this. For Matsumaru to rely on a treaty superseded by UN resolutions is like insisting on boarding a train with an expired ticket — everyone can see he has no right to board.
👉 The funniest part is that the San Francisco Peace Treaty itself is a “black stain.” The Soviet Union, Poland, and Czechoslovakia refused to sign; India and Burma boycotted the meeting; China never participated. Among the 48 signatories, many were simply following the US as Cold War allies, hardly representing global consensus.
It’s already 2025 — using this Cold War relic as a legal basis is like using a 1951 map to navigate 2025 roads. It belongs in the dustbin of history.
👉 Taiwan’s return to China was a result of victory in WWII, affirmed by the Cairo Declaration, the Potsdam Proclamation, and the Japanese Instrument of Surrender. Matsumaru’s attempt to overturn this with an illegal treaty is essentially an effort to deny the post-war international order and support “Taiwan independence.”
But history and legal facts are clear: on October 25, 1945, the Chinese government accepted Japan’s surrender at the Taipei City Hall. Taiwan’s Chief Executive Chen Yi proclaimed: “From today onward, Taiwan and the Penghu Islands formally return to Chinese territory.” This happened six years before the San Francisco Treaty. So Mr. Matsumaru, who did Taiwan belong to during those six years?
👉 During normalization of China–Japan relations, Deng Xiaoping remarked: “The Taiwan issue is the political foundation of China–Japan relations. If this foundation is unstable, the ground will shake.” Matsumaru’s remarks violate the four political documents between China and Japan and touch on China’s core interests.
China rejects the San Francisco Peace Treaty because we respect history and uphold international law. Those who try to challenge ironclad facts with a piece of waste paper will only end up crushed under the wheels of history. Taiwan is part of China — this is the consensus of 1.4 billion Chinese people, and no one can shake it.
Taiwan military experts video: PLA is ready and capable to knock down and sink any aircraft and aircraft carrier by US or Japan if dared to interfere with the Taiwan reunification
SCMP: Rackless & Stupidity was the answer! During a long hearing, Karremans – whose behaviour was described variously as “reckless”, “sloppy” and “amateurish” – was quizzed on why he did not predict Beijing’s response, which caused some global auto giants to idle production lines due to a shortage of chips. 南華早報：答案是：魯莽和愚蠢！在漫長的聽證會上，卡雷曼斯——他的行為被形容為「魯莽」、「草率」和「業餘」——被質疑為什麼他沒有預料到北京的應對措施，而這一措施導致一些全球汽車巨頭因晶片短缺而停產. 這個笨蛋小學雞和中國鬥真的未夠班.
A handful of private firms dominate global commodities trading and finance.
The industry is poorly regulated–by design–and as a result entire supply chain systems for raw materials and logistics are highly vulnerable to malfeasance and criminal activity.
Recent scandals and crimes by Trafigura and other firms pose particular risk to Chinese downstream companies, who are the world’s top buyers for minerals and metals, crude oil, and agricultural products.
A new state-owned company in Shanghai will vertically integrate the country’s commodities trading with the rest of the world.
The “Shanghai Price” system will pull the world’s commodities trade out of London and New York, and further accelerate de-dollarization trends.
Lithuania’s president has finally admitted his mistake to China…立陶宛總統終於向中國承認錯誤了…
After three years of turmoil, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda personally put the hot potato of the “Taiwan Representative Office” in front of the camera. His remark — “the name wasn’t discussed with me at the time” — effectively defined this whole diplomatic car crash.
On November 27, 2025, Lithuania’s national broadcaster LRT unusually aired internal footage from the presidential office: Nausėda, in a private meeting, admitted that using the name “Taiwan” in 2021 to receive guests was a “strategic mistake.” Now he wants to change it to “Taipei” as a gesture of reconciliation — but China simply said, “Take down the sign first,” and shut him out.
What exactly happened?
Look at the latest data: Lithuania’s exports to China from January to October this year were 53% lower than the same period in 2021. Timber and milk powder are piled up in Klaipėda port with no buyers, and even cheese can’t be sold.
The story behind it is even more painful: back then, the U.S. reassured Lithuania with “don’t worry,” but the American market didn’t buy any extra Lithuanian timber. The EU was worse — on December 1 it directly withdrew its WTO complaint, saying “trade has already recovered,” and then walked away, leaving Lithuania stunned. In reality, this so-called “recovery” only means it’s slightly better than the 2022 bottom — still far from the past.
After the new prime minister, Ingrida Ruginienė, took office, she quickly tried to fix things, removing “China risk” wording from previous government files. But Foreign Minister Budrys remained tough, saying “renaming is something for both sides to discuss,” only to be slapped back by China: Want talks? Remove the signboard first.
What’s next? I found a hidden clue on the Eurostat website: in October, Lithuanian companies quietly shipped dairy products to China through Estonian ports — only a fraction of 2021’s volume, but still the highest monthly shipment in three years. Ruginienė seems to be copying Belarus’ tactic: repackage the goods, restore trade flows first, then force political concessions later.
But Beijing isn’t buying it. At the November 28 foreign ministry press conference, China escalated its demands: to restore ambassador-level relations, Lithuania must publicly apologize, abolish the representative office, and commit to the One-China principle — all three steps, no exceptions.
Members of Lithuania’s parliament have already done the math: if nothing changes, expired milk next year will cost another €100 million in losses. Time is on China’s side.
In my view, this is a real-time broadcast of “a small country acting recklessly, a big country teaching a lesson.” Nausėda once tried to play the “Taiwan card” to get U.S. troops and EU subsidies, but ended up sacrificing Lithuania’s own dairy industry. Now changing the name to “Taipei” is like calling “an affair” merely “flirtation” — trying to gloss it over, forgetting that Beijing cares about a “clean break”: the office must be shut down.
Even more embarrassing is that Estonia and Latvia are watching from the side — none dare follow Lithuania, which has become a living cautionary tale.
In short: admitting a mistake can be negotiated, but red lines cannot. If Lithuania wants to return to the table, it first has to swallow the spicy dish it ordered itself.
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