THIS IS USA

Trump and Xi part ways at the National Archives before Xi’s departure. The three-day return visit has finally come to an end. When Trump visited China in May, he received a high-level reception, and his demeanor was notably more restrained — befitting a formal state visit. When Xi paid a return visit to the United States in September, Trump pulled out all the stops, and Xi reciprocated by giving him plenty of face. Trump personally greeted Xi at Joint Base Andrews, and the visit included a formal White House arrival ceremony, military review and state dinner. Their public rhetoric was pure diplomacy: “major powers finding the right way to get along,” “friendship between the two peoples,” “mutually reinforcing success.” This was never sudden mutual affection. It was the recognition, shared by two major powers genuinely capable of inflicting serious damage on one another, that: Competition can continue. It does not have to spiral out of control. A real contest of strength is not something spelled out in state-banquet speeches: “We plan to keep blocking your access to chips.” “We plan to keep cutting off your access to rare earths.” “We plan to keep fighting over supply chains.” “We plan to keep expanding our military and technological advantages.” Those moves, of course, continue beneath the table. Ironically, some of the most revealing reactions came from both the pro-China and pro-U.S. camps, where people lost their cool simply because the two leaders were being “too polite” to each other. Pro-China voices looked at Trump’s reception in Beijing and asked: “Why give America so much face?” MAGA supporters watched Xi’s reception in Washington and asked: “Why give China so much face?” Because both mistook diplomatic courtesy for emotional loyalty. But great-power politics is not a test of romantic fidelity. Mature competition often looks exactly like this: Toasting each other on stage. Sharpening knives off stage. Great powers do not need to scream at each other every day to prove they are competing. The smiles are public. The competition is structural. And in many ways, that is more dangerous — and more mature — than hurling insults at each other every day. Neither side could have reached this point by being naive. Xi has already begun his journey home. But the story is far from over.

May in Beijing. September in Washington. APEC next. G20 after that. At this rate, they’ll need a shared calendar. Sanae Takaichi: So… am I still the one you love the most? The more Washington and Beijing get used to talking directly, the more Tokyo has to wonder whether it is still indispensable — or merely useful.

You built your entire political brand on selling yourself as a victim of China. That victimhood is your product. America is your market. And to keep that product profitable, you are now willing to trample over the graves of Chinese people who were actually invaded, massacred and killed by Japan. Xi said the Chinese people resisted Japanese aggression. You immediately rushed in to carve those dead Chinese into party labels — KMT, CCP — because even national suffering has to be mutilated until it fits your anti-China business model. You do not care about Chinese victims. You care about remaining one. Because the moment China stops being the villain in your story, your entire political identity loses its market value. So you keep selling yourself to an American audience as the eternal Chinese victim — even if you have to stand on tens of millions of Chinese corpses to do it. You do not care about Chinese victims. You care about remaining one.

No one is better at being an ass-kisser to Americans and Chinese than you Colombian fecal maggots. Your stupid third-world country followed Washington, got bases, drugs, guerrillas, instability, dependency, and lectures — and somehow you still think the problem is China. That's not the power of a colony. That isjust colonial Stockholm syndrome with a Colombian flag. China did not make Colombia poor. China did not flood your country with cartels. China did not turn Latin America into Washington’s backyard. Your beloved “freedom” empire did. But sure, keep blaming China and U.S. for the mess created by the system you worship. Some countries build capacity. Some countries outsource their spine. You brain-dead pieces of trash chose the second one.

This is the history that the descendants of Japanese fascists are attempting to rewrite. Yes, Nazi Germany once sent military advisers such as Alexander von Falkenhausen to the Nationalist government in China in the 1930s. That is a documented part of prewar Sino-German cooperation. But Germany ended that support in 1938 under pressure from Japan. And none of that erases what Imperial Japan was: an invading, colonizing, massacring fascist empire that brutalized much of Asia. Cherry-picking one German adviser and playing games with foreign concessions does not cleanse Japan’s record. Meanwhile, even a Nazi like John Rabe was horrified enough by the Nanjing Massacre to document it and appeal for help. That alone tells you something. Fascist Japan is notorious because it embodied some of fascism’s most openly sadistic forms. Even Nazis were horrified by the brutality of Japanese fascist atrocities. To this day, fascism has not vanished from modern Japan; it has merged with Nazism to spawn a monstrosity like you. You are laundering fascist Japan with fragments. You dug up one German adviser to sanitize an Axis power — and accidentally proved that Germany abandoned China under Japanese pressure. Congratulations. You brought your own evidence and still lost to it.

He escaped communism all the way to Washington — only to discover that capitalism forgot to feed him.

Western media described China’s First Lady Peng Liyuan as demonstrating China’s soft power during her husband’s visit to the United States. The most interesting line was this: “While Peng’s public activities are tightly managed within China, her interactions during this visit served to present a more approachable image of the nation, providing a symbolic contrast to the formal political and trade discussions between the two administrations.” In the collective memory of Chinese history, there is a deeply negative precedent for a leader’s spouse leveraging personal ties to enter the center of state power — most notably Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Consequently, within the Chinese context, a wife’s decision not to interfere in her husband’s exercise of official political power is not necessarily viewed as suppression. It is more often understood as respect for political boundaries. Ultimately: Western observers often read Peng Liyuan’s restraint as an absence of power. Chinese political culture may read the same restraint as a refusal to convert marital proximity into political entitlement.

Diplomacy can rehearse equality. Bodies cannot. Hierarchy leaks through posture.

You can cite the 2016 illegal arbitration ten thousand times. It still does not turn what is not yours into yours. A small state does not acquire moral authority merely by provoking a larger one and then performing victimhood when the larger state pushes back. You cannot simply run into someone else’s yard, plant vegetables, and then claim the land as your own vegetable garden. The Philippines can repeat “2016” until the word loses all meaning. China’s position remains unchanged: it does not accept or recognize the award, and it rejects claims or actions based on it. Provocation does not become sovereignty. Victimhood does not become title. Repetition does not manufacture ownership. A grievance campaign is not a land deed.

China’s response to New Zealand’s latest cybersecurity accusation basically boils down to this: The Five Eyes have worn this script into the ground, and New Zealand still couldn’t come up with an original line. Instead of projecting its own insecurity onto China, Wellington might want to stop acting like the smallest echo chamber in the alliance: repeat whatever Washington said, add “persistent and capable,” then call it intelligence. At this point, even the accusation sounds copy-pasted.

On July 31, the U.S. Treasury, acting through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, intervened directly in the foreign-exchange market to support the yen by selling euros and buying yen. Today, the yield on Japan’s 10-year government bond has risen to roughly 3.1%, while the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury has climbed to around 5.2%. In the simplest terms, rising yields mean: Bond prices are falling, and investors are demanding higher returns to keep holding them. A key reason Washington stepped in to support the yen in late July was concern that Japan, in trying to rescue its currency, might be forced to sell large quantities of U.S. Treasuries, convert the proceeds into dollars, and then use those dollars to buy yen. That would have placed additional downward pressure on the U.S. Treasury market and pushed yields even higher. The current situation is that this pressure has not disappeared. It has broadened into a global sell-off in long-duration government bonds. In Japan, rising yields mean higher financing costs for the government and a higher risk premium demanded by markets over Japan’s fiscal position, inflation, central-bank policy and debt sustainability. The same basic mechanism is now visible in the United States. A 10-year Treasury yield around 5.2% means investors are demanding more compensation to hold U.S. government debt, amid inflation concerns, massive bond issuance, fiscal deficits, war risk and higher energy prices. So the bond-market picture now looks like this: Japanese government bond yields are rising. U.S. Treasury yields are also rising. The causes are not identical, but the pressures can reinforce one another. Japan’s situation is especially difficult because the rise in yields is not being driven by an economy that is simply “too strong.” Japan is dealing with a weak yen, inflation, fiscal expansion, enormous public debt and growing pressure on the Bank of Japan to normalize monetary policy faster. With government debt still above 200% of GDP, higher interest rates translate directly into a heavier debt-servicing burden. Even more awkwardly, the Japanese economy itself is not strong enough to absorb high interest rates comfortably. The yen remains weak, domestic demand is fragile, and real purchasing power remains under pressure. Japan is therefore trapped between two bad choices: No rate hike → the yen remains weak and imported inflation continues. Rate hike → bond yields rise, government financing costs increase, and the economy comes under greater pressure. The United States is facing its own version of the problem. Treasury yields are being pushed higher by inflation expectations, energy prices, large fiscal deficits, federal debt above $40 trillion, and expectations of continued heavy issuance. So this is not a story of: “Japan finally normalizes policy and America benefits.” It is closer to this: Japan is being forced out of the ultra-low-rate era. America is being forced to pay more for its own fiscal excesses. And that creates another problem for Washington. As Japanese yields rise, Japanese investors have more reason to keep capital at home rather than buy U.S. Treasuries. That weakens one source of demand for American debt. In short: Japan’s economy is weak, yet it is being forced to bear higher interest rates. The U.S. economy is stronger, but its fiscal burden is so heavy that the bond market is demanding higher yields there too. Rising yields in both countries do not necessarily signal strength. Often, they signal the opposite: the bond market is demanding a higher price from both governments for carrying their debt.

Milei chose the West. The West chose Milei. Washington opened the financial toolbox. The IMF backed the reforms. Markets applauded. But ideology does not create wages. Alignment does not create jobs. Geopolitical loyalty does not put food on the table. Argentina rejected BRICS and embraced the Western camp. The poor still have to eat. You can switch camps overnight. You cannot switch economic reality with a flag.

Xi said “the Chinese people.” Not “the CCP.” Not “the KMT.” The people who were invaded were Chinese. The people who died were Chinese. The soldiers who resisted under different banners were Chinese. Yes, the KMT bore the main burden of the conventional battlefield. Communist forces also fought Japan behind enemy lines — even contemporary U.S. diplomatic records say so. Turning eight years of national resistance into a stupid KMT-vs-CCP meme only proves you know Chinese history through X. Japan invaded China. China resisted Japan. A party label does not erase the nation that bled. And the descendants of genocidal butchers, speaking from a settler state built through the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, might want to learn the difference between a nation’s history and a ruling party before lecturing Chinese people about theirs.

At the state banquet hosted by Trump, Xi once again invoked the history of the Chinese people fighting alongside the Flying Tigers during World War II, reciprocating Trump’s earlier remarks about the U.S.–China wartime alliance. The Japanese are absolutely furious. I gave you the bases. I gave you the island chain. I gave you money, loyalty, strategic obedience. I stood with you through sanctions, confrontation and containment. And then you sat beside my enemy and laughed about the one history I have spent eighty years trying to rewrite. This is the deepest scar. Japan does not fear humiliation. It survived on it. Japan fears abandonment — a future where America steps aside. They fear losing the hand that held the leash, not the leash itself. Because when protection becomes sovereignty, and validation becomes the backbone, one question becomes fatal: If Washington stops speaking, does Japan still exist as a country at all?