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Thousands of Turkish women marched to Taksim Square at the Feminist Night Parade on International Women's Day in Istanbul, Turkey.
💡 SPOTLIGHT
China's military intentions are clear — and arming Taiwan is the only deterrence
China is spending more money on weapons and defense than ever. The reason is evident: Xi Jinping wants to take Taiwan. Europe should follow the U.S. and support Taipei militarily as the only way to deter Beijing from war, writes Gregor Schwung in German daily Die Welt.
Fear is never the best advisor.
It is, however, an understandable emotion when China announces the biggest increase in its defense budget in memory. And when Beijing does so after siding with Russia in the Ukraine war with its supposed "peace plan" and justifying the increase with an alleged "escalating oppression" of China in the world.
The budget plan unveiled by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang calls for a 7.2% increase in defense spending. That's more than in previous years — and just the official figure.
Experts estimate the true spending is much higher, as Beijing finances its military through numerous shadow budgets.
The Stockholm-based peace research institute Sipri, for example, calculates that the budget is 25 to 50% larger than stated.
China also leaves the world in the dark as to what it actually spends the money on. What is clear is that Beijing has been working for years on modernizing its military. According to Beijing's plans, it is to be transformed into a "world-class" force by 2050.
Why it needs to transform itself becomes apparent when one listens to how Beijing talks about Taiwan.
For example, a white paper published in October spoke of the "same blood" that binds Chinese and Taiwanese people together. And at this year's Munich Security Conference, chief diplomat Wang Yi blatantly denied Taiwan's independence: "It has never been a country and will never be a country in the future."
This rhetoric makes clear how ideologically driven Xi Jinping's foreign policy has become.
The fact that the increase in the defense budget is now larger than that of other expenditures and is also higher than the projected economic growth of 5% shows that ideology is now more important to him than maintaining prosperity.
In this respect, we must expect that China will not be deterred from attacking Taiwan by threats of economic consequences alone.
The United States has understood this. They now want to station up to 200 U.S. soldiers on the island to train Taiwanese troops. Washington is thus driving up the military costs destined for Beijing taking into account what such an attack would entail.
Europe, too, should offer military support to Taiwan, because deterrence is the only thing that ultimately can keep Xi from going to war.
— Gregor Schwung / Die Welt
🌎 7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW
• Russia airstrikes: More than 80 Russian missiles have been fired at cities across Ukraine in a sustained overnight barrage, the biggest in weeks. At least nine people have been killed and power at Europe's largest nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhya has been lost, leading a UN official to issue an urgent warning. The attacks hit cities from Kharkiv in the north to Odessa in the south and Zhytomyr in the west. Attacks on the capital Kyiv have also been reported. The Ukrainian military claimed it successfully shot down 34 cruise missiles and four of the eight Iranian-made Shahed drones which were fired.
• Georgia to drop “foreign agents” draft law after protests: Georgia's ruling party has said it will withdraw a controversial draft law, in the face of mass protests and widespread international criticism. Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets in Tbilisi this week in anger as a Russian-style law began its passage through parliament which would have labeled NGOs and media taking over 20% of funding from abroad as “foreign agents.”
• Women in Istanbul defy ban on protests on International Women’s Day: Thousands of Turkish women defied a ban on protests Wednesday evening on International Women's Day and rallied in the city of Istanbul for what they called a "feminist night march." Police prevented them from reaching Taksim Square in the city center but allowed them to carry on with their march for a while, before using tear gas to disperse them. In 2021, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew the country from the Istanbul Convention, a human rights treaty of the Council of Europe opposing violence against women and domestic violence.
• TikTok launches Project Clover to allay China security fears: TikTok has launched security measures in an effort to reduce concerns it could be made to share user data with China. Project Clover will see a separate security company "monitor data flows" — and TikTok will make it harder to identify individual users in data. This measure is a response to the European Commission’s ban of the app from staff devices.
• U.S. Senator McConnell in hospital: U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has been taken to hospital after a fall at a Washington DC hotel during a private dinner. Mr McConnell, 81, is serving a seventh term in the Senate.
• Europe’s second-warmest winter on record: Europe is emerging from its second-warmest winter on record, exceeded only by the winter of 2019-20, as climate change continues to intensify. The average temperature in Europe from December to February was 1.4 degrees Celsius (2.8 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 1991-2020 average for the Boreal winter season.
• Japanese police arrest 3 for taking part in “sushi terrorism” pranks: Japanese police have arrested three people over "sushi terror": viral, unhygienic pranks that are threatening the world-famous feature of sushi conveyor belt restaurants. The spontaneous series of viral videos began last month with a clip of a man licking a soy sauce bottle on a sushi train.
🗞️ FRONT PAGE
German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine devotes its front page to the street protests in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. The crowds were protesting against a controversial Russian-style law, which would have classified non-government and media groups as “foreign agents” if they receive more than 20% of their funds from abroad. The ruling party withdrew the bill Thursday morning following the protests.
#️⃣ BY THE NUMBERS
$3 trillion
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to unveil his 2024 spending plan, aiming to curb the nation's $31 trillion deficit by nearly $3 trillion over the next 10 years. Biden’s plan reportedly hinges on tax increases, while Republicans are pushing for sharp cuts to domestic spending.
📰 STORY OF THE DAY
Last holdouts: The basement lives of Ukrainians who refuse to flee frontline towns
Russian shells hit frontline cities Siversk and Lyman every day, but some people are refusing to abandon their homes. Life has gone underground. A year since the beginning of the Russian invasion, a reporter from Ukrainska Pravda meets people surviving in basements — their towns destroyed, but still alive.
💥 Lyman came under daily artillery and rocket bombardment when Russian forces attacked the city in May 2022. Ukrainian forces took the city back five months ago. Houses are still in ruins, but streets and sidewalks have been cleared. Lyman is like a time capsule, with sidewalks for tourists still visible among the ruins — but there are no excursions, no souvenir shops. Of 51,000 residents, only about 7,000 have remained.
🏠 We talked to Lyuba at the entrance to the basement of her five-storey house. During the intense shelling, it was "densely populated." In addition to Lyuba, it is home to the church sexton, Yurii, a pensioner who used to be a blacksmith in railway workshops. "The basements in the houses are different," says Lyuba. "Some are unfenced, where people sleep like in a gym. But in our basement, there are rooms for each apartment. Now, everyone has personal bomb shelters."
⚡ The military administration of Siversk distributes individual hygiene kits to each person every month. Generators have been distributed — one for every two or three basements, and gasoline for generators is free, as is drinking water and food. At the same time, officials from the military administration are constantly trying to convince people to leave because of the daily shelling. But people stay in the basements.
➡️ Read more on Worldcrunch.com
📣 VERBATIM
“Tucker Carlson is not credible.”
— In what’s been described as an “extraordinary rebuke,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates has lambasted conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson over his depiction of the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots as “mostly peaceful chaos” earlier this week.
📸 PHOTO DU JOUR
Thousands of Turkish women marched to Taksim Square chanting “There is no obedience, there is rebellion” at the Feminist Night Parade on International Women's Day in Istanbul, Turkey. The police prevented them from reaching the square but allowed them to carry on with their march for a while, before using tear gas to disperse them. — Photo: Tolga Uluturk/ZUMA
👉 MORE FROM WORLDCRUNCH
• Iran, How A Clerical Regime Has Undermined Religion Itself — KAYHAN-LONDON
• NGO Crackdowns Are Spreading, In Both Dictatorships And Democracies — WORLDCRUNCH
• Menstruation Must Be Talked About And Treated — Like Any Other Health Issue — THE WIRE
✍️ Newsletter by Ginevra Falciani, Emma Albright, Anne-Sophie Goninet and Bertrand Hauger
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Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.
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