Shakedown: Timeline of America’s 21stC war on China 1

Page 3: Shakedown Timeline 2020 to the Present. Covid, Joe Biden’s presidency to Trump’s 2nd term

Page 2: Shakedown Timeline 2010-2020. Obama’s Pivot-to-China to Donald Trump’s first presidency

Page 1: (This page) Shakedown Timeline 1997-2010. Hong Kong Handover and WTO entry to Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia

An epic contemporaneous timeline charting more than twenty years of the relationship between China and the West. Unique live commentary and analysis of US and UK-China political relations.

Documenting events as they happened, in articles and radio broadcasts strung on a historical through-line.

***To get the full chronological picture of the West’s growing hostility towards a developing China, read these extracts from the bottom to the top. This online publication features extracts of Anna’s BBC programmes and published articles (indented) with links. A pdf or eBook with full articles will shortly be available for download.

2010, SOUTH CHINA SEA AND ASIA PIVOT:
The Shakedown timeline begins in earnest. In 2010, the Obama administration begins a new strategy, echoing NATO’s proposed extension to Russia’s borders, by asserting US power on mainland Asia. It woos Vietnam and Cambodia, China’s close neighbours, with “strategic cooperation” and military exercises.
On the Korean peninsula, Bush’s planned gradual military withdrawal is reversed as Obama pours in even more forces. Australia and Singapore receive new deployments of US troops & hardware.
In 2012, China ends support for US sanctions on Iran.

Tuesday, 22 December 2009 
Sinophobia and Copenhagen: open letter to the Guardian’s Mark Lynas 
PREVIOUSLY: The story so far … One moment we were told there was a scandal brewing with the leaking of the ‘Danish Text’, a stitch-up of the poor nations by the wealthy, with the US and Britain among those implicated (8th Dec 2009 onwards), the next moment, this happened. 
The Copenhagen blame game continues with the media reaching a hysterical pitch in their attempts to demonise China over the disappointing results at the climate change summit. 
The Guardian publishes another lurid smear, this time by someone called Mark Lynas and titled: “How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room” 
Starring Mark Lynas as Sax Rohmer which, I guess, makes me Fu Manchu. (I recommend you read all the comments on the Guardian thread.) … continues
READ MORE >>> 


Saturday, 19 December 2009 
Climate change: Is new Independent newspaper regime Sinophobic? 
Well, I used to be a fan of The Independent, what with having Robert Fisk and being so brilliant on the Iraq war. But with an article yesterday headlined, “China’s delaying tactics threaten climate deal” by Chris Green, and allowing racist epithets in their comments threads, has The Indy jumped the shark? … 
Let’s remember it’s not China that’s been belching out carbon emissions for over a hundred years. America has cheated the Kyoto figures, claiming to aim to cut emissions by a measly 17 percent by 2020. But this is against 2005 levels and not the Kyoto base year of 1990, meaning if we’re lucky, the US will have made cuts of only 4 percent. No wonder they put the rat into ratify and refused to sign up. 
Currently producing four times the emissions of China per capita, even if all had gone well at Copenhagen, the US would still have been allowed to pollute at twice the rate of the poor countries for each man, woman and child by 2050. … continues
READ MORE >>>


Saturday, 12 December 2009
Tony Blair admits Iraq war lies: what happens at Chilcot?
What sort of madness is it that makes a person insist in the face of facts, principles and public opposition, that they alone are right in taking an action that results in over a million civilian deaths, impoverishes us as a nation and rips up our moral fabric?
Tony Blair has now admitted in the softest of interviews with BBC’s Fern Britton — not Jeremy Paxman or any of the other heavyweights, note —that his decision to go to war in Iraq was nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), and everything to do with regime change. … continues 
READ MORE >>>

8 December, COPENHAGEN: LEAKED “DANISH TEXT” STITCH-UP BY THE RICH NATIONS – OBAMA EMBARRASSED
News breaks on day two of the summit that the industrialised nations are secretly working to betray the poorer nations by grabbing power over poorer nations while weakening their own commitments to reducing greenhouse gases despite having pumped out most of the CO2 themselves since the industrial revolution. The document abandons the 2C global warming limit, omits targets to cut emissions by the developed nations, sidelines the UN and effectively trashes the agreed Kyoto protocol. It would mean the richer nations, per capita, would be allowed to emit twice as much as everyone else.
Obama is humiliated, his reputation damaged by the revelation that he is part of the subterfuge and not as much of a straight-up guy as was assumed.
Within days, knives are out. A rogues gallery of politicised climate experts divert anger and frustration onto China.

Sunday, 6 December 2009 
China, Copenhagen and climate change
Another climate summit, another chance for the West to blame China for the pollution they themselves pumped out over a century and a half since their industrial revolutions. Having transferred manufacturing to the profitable cheap labour of China’s global workshop, the US leads the charge deflecting from their own inaction.
Monday sees the start of the Copenhagen climate conference, marking the end of a two-year period which aims to see a far-reaching and legally binding global agreement on how to combat climate change. 
China is widely regarded as the Big Bad in this scenario, called “the world’s biggest polluter”, and yet the West has been belching out carbon emissions for 160 years with no serious sign of abatement. The US is still the biggest polluter per capita with Americans still consuming a huge proportion of the world’s resources. I don’t know whether the figure of one American kid consuming the same as 100 Bangladeshi children still holds true, but the nation that wants gas at ten cents a gallon and persists in its divine right to drive Humvees is telling China to shut the fridge door. …
China has introduced a whole slew of newly released renewable energy and clean technology regulations, while all the West can come up with are delusional carbon market exchanges where rich nations buy carbon allowances from poor nations. Over five million people in the city of Dezhou, Shandong, use electric appliances powered by solar energy. 
Each Chinese household will be expected to pay the annual equivalent of $64 to contribute towards the $30 billion dollars per year China needs to invest to meet its climate aims. … continues 
READ MORE >>> 

16-18 November 2009, OBAMA STATE VISIT TO CHINA
The joint statement from Presidents Obama and Hu Jintao recognises that “U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue offers a unique forum to promote understanding, expand common ground, reduce differences, and develop solutions to common problems,” whatever they might possibly be. It stresses the importance of US and Chinese to “advance sustained and reliable military-to-military relations in the future” just in case …
Which is why the events at the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit the following month are so startling.

13 November 2009 OBAMA IN TOKYO
At the Tokyo leg of his tour of Asia, one year after his election, Barack Obama calls himself the “first Pacific president” despite all that World War II baggage, while China saves the world economy from America’s devastating crash by acting as shock absorber.

Friday, 9 October 2009
Chinese serial killer tamed: Turandot first night review
The West divides Asian women into dangerous Dragon Ladies and passive Lotus Blossoms, the deep, collective psychological template for a feminised China, and codifies it across the culture. In this instance in opera. Giacomo Puccini creates the submissive, tragic, Cho Cho San in his 1904 opera of David Belasco’s 1900 play about Americans in Japan, Madame Butterfly.
The play and opera are written for western audiences shortly after the first Sino-Japanese war (1894-5) makes Japan the dominant power in the region, so perhaps the feeble, disempowered East of the theatrical portrayal is wishful thinking.
China is at its weakest due to a decaying Qing dynasty and foreign forces feasting on the wounded nation. Japan has learnt from China’s Opium Wars defeat and put on military muscle.
Turandot is premiered in 1926, 14 years after the Republic of China is founded and civil war looms. China and Japan are gaining strength in their own way. Eastern defiance of the West is embodied in the nightmare vision of the killer princess (see also Anna May Wong as evil daughter of Fu Manchu). Culture shapes western perceptions of Asians that will last for generations.
Puccini gives us the other half of his Orientalist pairing in the opera Turandot, first performed in 1926. Having sweetened up audiences with Madama Butterfly‘s selfless lotus blossom character almost thirty years earlier, he shocks the bourgeoisie with a tale of a wicked serial-killer Princess who kills her innocent male suitors when they fail to answer her three riddles.
The latest ENO production has decided not to subvert depictions of the Chinese as barbarian torture-mongers, but instead reinforces it with images of cannibalism which I suspect are absent from the original libretto — roasted decapitated bodies of Turandot’s victims hanging from the kitchen ceiling like barbecued duck, and stared at by a row of heads. Very appetising if you’re planning an after-show dinner round the corner in Chinatown. Perhaps they took their (barbe)cue from More Light at the Arcola this summer, where another yellowface production made much of Chinese cruelty. High art seems to be going all out to link China’s most popular benign contribution to world culture, its food, with old colonialist fantasies of the Chinese as subhuman. … continues
READ MORE >>>

2009, US GREAT FINANCIAL CRASH FALLOUT
This is the period when the world is reeling from America’s Great Crash of 2008. A worldwide recession threatens to tip into a depression. China acts as our global lifeboat as well as growth engine and stabilises the economy by allowing international currencies to devalue against the yuan, taking a huge hit itself. It creates credit for infrastructure spending and digs into its reserves to prop up the yuan. Furthermore, it buys up a third of US debt and encourages domestic consumption in its huge middle class which, at over 500 million, is bigger than the entire population of the United States. China also encourages its people to buy American to help out their superpower friend. In doing so, it kicks off the longest bull run ever in American markets.
But no good deed goes unpunished …

5 July 2009 URUMQI, XINJIANG: A riot and terrorist attack in the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR)kills 197 and injures 1,721, mostly Han Chinese. Further attacks in May 2014 kill 43 with 90 wounded.

7 May 2009, CHINA SUBMITS 9-DASH LINE MAP TO THE UN
Vietnam and the Philippines have been reclaiming islands in the South China Sea for decades. Vietnam has occupied three of the disputed strategically located Spratly Islands in the South China Sea since the 1970s, one military garrison ejected from the Johnson South Reef by China in 1988. (Sino-Vietnam War February – March 1979.) Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also have garrisons on islands. but, notably, China does not.
In 2009, Vietnam steps up “fishing militia” militarisation and, with Malaysia, seeks United Nations approval to extend 200 mile continental shelf limit. China responds by submitting its nine-dash line claim to the UN in 2009, reaffirming “indisputable sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea and the adjacent waters”.
The PRC’s nine-dash line is based on the Republic of China’s 11-dash map of 1947, itself based on a 1935 map.
China will follow Vietnam’s example in 2014 and begins militarising, having previously reclaimed land features as part of its UNESCO obligations agreed in Paris 1987. According to Kishore Mahbubani, in 2015, when Xi Jinping makes an offer to Obama not to militarise their islands, Obama responds by sending even more military. In July 2016, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), ratified in 1994 and to which the US has not signed up, rules for the Philippines against China’s nine-dash line territorial claim. The ruling is rejected by both the PRC and the ROC (Taiwan).

Tuesday, 13 January 2009 
Anna’s first attempt to introduce a new generation to Hollywood’s first Chinese screen legend, Anna May Wong, was rejected by the BBC in 2005 (AMW’s birth centenary) on the grounds that, “No-one knows who she is”. Second time lucky and it was finally made in 2008. 
Anna May Wong: A Celestial Star In Piccadilly – BBC Radio 4
Anna Chen writes and presents a half-hour profile of Hollywood’s first Chinese movie star for BBC Radio 4. Produced by Mukti Jain Campion for Culture Wise.
Born in Los Angeles in 1905, during the height of the Yellow Peril fears about the Chinese, Anna May Wong overcame prejudice and racism enshrined in US law to become Hollywood’s first Chinese screen legend, making more than 60 movies.
Broadcast 11:30, Tuesday 13th January 2009. 
Chosen as Pick of the Week by BBC R4, Guardian Guide, The Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday. 
Anna May Wong Must Die! 
READ MORE >>>

Sunday 14 December 2008
Barack Obama wins the US presidential election November 2008
Obama placates angry Asians: How politics works
President-elect Barack Obama’s appointment of pugnacious banker Rahm Emanuel as his Chief-of-Staff couldn’t have been more controversial, what with Rahmbo’s volunteer service in the Israel Defence Forces, his support of Bush’s Iraq war, and advocacy of compulsory “universal sevice” for all young Americans.
But then Obama nominated New Mexico governor Bill Richardson for commerce secretary, an appointment which pitched Latinos and Asian-Americans against each other. Richardson displayed none of the racial sensitivity he reserves for his Hispanic constituency when he helped prosecute Taiwanese-American Wen Ho Lee, a former nuclear scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, for spying ten years ago.
  “This was the major Chinese-American civil rights case in the last 30 years,” said Albert Wang, a Fremont physician. “And there was a feeling among many Chinese-Americans, particularly in Silicon Valley, that Bill Richardson did a lot to promote the notion that all Chinese-Americans are potential spies.”
“Wen Ho Lee bore the brunt of Richardson’s actions, but there were many Chinese-American scientists who felt great fear,” said Der, who once headed Chinese for Affirmative Action in San Francisco. “Even I got a visit from the FBI, and I’m not a scientist.” Gee, how was Obama gonna get all the US Asians on board?
Hmmm, how to mollify a substantial minority with financial clout and an eye on political power?
Meanwhile, and entirely unconnected, Obama’s cabinet gets an Asian. It looks like science super-egghead and Nobel Laureate Dr Stephen Chu will be Head of the Department of Energy where his remit is biofuels, a poisoned chalice if ever there was one. 
Hated by the big coal producers AND loathed by environmentalists, I don’t fancy Chu’s chances. 
Hey, Steve, the vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison. The chalice from the palace has the brew that is true. Doh! No, the flagon with the dragon holds the brew that is true … Watch out!

8-24 August 2008, THE BEIJING OLYMPICS
Much maligned and sneered at by the western press even as China is saving the world economy from America’s meltdown. Artist Ai Weiwei removes his name from the beautiful Birds Nest Stadium he designed as a protest. Under pressure, Steven Spielberg removes himself as an artistic adviser, leaving only Zhang Yimou to direct the spectacle. The technological showcase is an awe-inspiring breakthrough as China shows the world it has come of age.

12 May 2008, SICHUAN EARTHQUAKE
The devastating 8 magnitude earthquake’s epicentre rips 19km below Wenchuan county in Sichuan, in the foothills of the Himalayas in the west of China and only 50 miles from the city of Chengdu.
It is the second costliest earthquake since 1900 at an estimated economic loss of US$130 billion, the most powerful since 1950, and leaves more than 87,000 people dead or missing. At least 4.8 million people lose their homes.
Poorly constructed buildings including schools and hospitals collapse, compounding the disaster.
Recovery and reconstruction entails speedy, efficient mobilisation and investment of US$146 billion, helped by the World Bank. Lessons are learnt. Quality, facilities and regulations are improved. The earthquake turns out to be “an opportunity to reconstruct all public-service facilities in the affected areas with high seismic standards and modern equipment.”
China asks the World Bank to partner in an overall $740 million project “to restore infrastructure, health and education services in several counties and municipalities in Sichuan and Gansu.” It will be used to, “among other things, reconstruct roads and bridges, water supply and sanitation, solid waste collection and disposal, and drainage, and to strengthen flood control, and restore health centers and schools.“

2007-2008 THE AMERICAN GLOBAL FINANCIAL CRISIS (GFC)
The American Global Financial Crisis (GFC) is the most serious financial crisis since the 1929 Great Depression, almost blowing up the world economy. The US stock market drops 20% and oil soars to more than $140 per barrel. China saves the world economy from America’s devastating crash by acting as shock absorber.
China’s foreign exchange reserves are more than US$1.9 trillion, much of which is invested in US treasury bonds or equities.

2006, US DEBT
The US manages to inflate its way out of much of its debt due to the value of the dollar falling by a third following the invasion of Iraq. When China complains, the US tells them to suck it up. Meanwhile, an alarming housing bubble is being pumped up.

20 April, PRESIDENT HU JINTAO VISITS THE WHITE HOUSE
“We feel very happy about the healthy and stable expansion of China-US relations,” says Hu. “Our bilateral relations are very good,” replies Bush. “And we – you and I – are committed to keeping them that way. Obviously, with as much commerce between our countries as there is, there’s going to be trade difficulties, but nevertheless, we both adopt a spirit of mutual respect and the desire to work through our problems for the common good of our peoples.”
Tensions remain. US critics insist China is undervaluing its currency by 40 percent. China’s economy, growing at 10.2 percent, has overtaken Japan to become the second largest in the world, standing at $8,200 billion against the USA’s $12,400.

June 2005 US TRIUMPH CONTINUES IN IRAQ – FORT BRAGG SPEECH
George W Bush’s Iraq War victory speech to troops at Fort Bragg announces the US won’t be leaving Iraq any time soon. “Our mission in Iraq is clear. We are hunting down the terrorists. We are helping Iraqis build a free nation that is an ally in the war on terror. We are advancing freedom in the broader Middle East.”
Meanwhile, hawks in the admin are worried about trade competition and reiterate the “strategic competitor” label as China starts to overtake the US in auto parts and furniture. It’s around this point that this author surmises the US is ticking off boxes in a list of obstacles to its absolute worldwide hegemony including Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and would likely include Libya, Lebanon, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea and end with Russia and China as the Grande Finale. The danger is that, being invisible and a mysterious model minority, Chinese are sitting ducks for what’s coming down the pike. The challenge will be to humanise them and extract them from the cultural and political ghettos to which they’ve been consigned.

31 March 2005, IRAQ WMD CLAIMS CONFIRMED FALSE
The Iraqi Intelligence Commission concludes in its final report that pre-war intelligence regarding WMD’s was false.” The commission tells Bush, “Dead wrong … a major intelligence failure”. “The report also expressed misgivings about U.S. intelligence on Iran, North Korea, China and Russia, but it said most of those findings were classified,” reports CNN.

2005, CHINA TRADE MOTORS AHEAD
This is the year China’s manufacturing takes off and starts to overtake the United States. China exports more auto parts than it imports – US industry struggles to keep up. Its wood furniture takes 60 percent of the market while US factories close. Cheap labour costs put China ahead but accusations start to fly that it is keeping the renminbi unfairly weak at 8.28 per $ … says the party that owns the dollar reserve currency.

7 September 2003 JP MORGAN WINS IRAQ BANK BONANZA
JP Morgan bank wins pole position in the Iraq War feeding frenzy when it is granted the Iraq bank mandate, coordinating 13 banks in the extraction of wealth from the invaded country. JP Morgan ends up paying Tony Blair £2-3 million a year for “consultancy”.

1 May 2003 BUSH DECLARES IRAQ VICTORY
In a televised speech from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in front of a banner declaring “MISSON ACCOMPLISHED”, Bush says: “”Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

19 March US WAR AGAINST IRAQ BEGINS
Operation Iraqi Freedom begins with air strikes, followed by a ground assault by forces comprising 250,000 American and 45,000 British troops, 70,000 Kurdish militia and a handful of others. Baghdad falls on 9 April.

15 February 2003 THE ANTI-IRAQ WAR MOVEMENT CULMINATES IN THE BIGGEST PROTEST IN BRITISH HISTORY
In a global day of protests against the looming Iraq War, Britain sees the largest demonstration in its history of over a million marching for peace. Despite this, a month later on 18 March 2003, Parliament votes to go to war and illegally invade Iraq.

September 2002 PAUL WOLFOWITZ BREAKS NATO PROMISE NOT TO ENLARGE UP TO RUSSIA’S BORDERS
At the NATO conference 24-25 September 2002, Paul Wolfowitz – author of the “Wolfowitz Doctrine,” architect of the Iraq War post-911, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld 2001-3, and 10th President of the World Bank (2005-7) – breaks with the NATO promise, made after German reunification (1990), not to extend to Russia’s borders.
In his Defense Policy Guidance for the Department of Defense (the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” written in 1992 for 1994-9 in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union), he established: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”
In 2002, he targets among others, the Balkans – Central and Eastern Europe – for “operational engagements” by the USA/Nato.
He has previously told General Wesley Clark in May 1991 that the U.S. would lead regime-change operations in Iraq, Syria and other former Soviet allies later identified as Lebanon, Libya, Somalia and Sudan: “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years.” 
To come: In 2005, in the wake of the war in Iraq that he advocated, Wolfowitz becomes the 10th President of the World Bank. In 2006, Robert Kagan — neocon architect of the Project for the New American Century and who is married to US Ambassador to Nato, Victoria Nuland — will name the Ukraine as being key in “the extension of Western liberal hegemony”. At the trial of Apple Daily tycoon Jimmy Lai in January 2024, Wolfowitz will be linked to the 2019 Hong Kong protests.

6 September 2002, BUSH BLACKLISTS UIGHUR SEPARATISTS
President Bush and the UN designate the Uighur East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM, based in the Xinjiang Special Autonomous Region of China) to be a terrorist organisation alongside Al Qaeda. China is brought on board as a partner in the War on Terror. 1992-2017 sees an intensive period of terrorist attacks across China killing over 1,000. and injuring many more. The Trump administration will later delist ETIM and accuse China of “genocide”.

11-13 April 2002 US-BACKED COUP AGAINST VENEZUELA’S PRESIDENT HUGO CHAVEZ FAILS
On 11 April, the US-supported opposition and military high command stage a coup to topple Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, elected democratically since 1998.
Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil in the world, bigger than Russia, bigger than Iran and bigger even than Saudi Arabia. Having already established his socialist credentials by helping the nation’s exploited farmers, the democratically elected Chavez raises public spending, increases oil industry taxes to 30 percent and brings the private transnational oil companies under greater government participation of 51 percent, giving the state run company, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A.(PDVSA), joint control.
PETRODOLLAR DOMINANCE CHALLENGED: In August 2000 Chavez had toured Opec countries to revitalise the organisation and control the price of oil, including visiting Saddam Hussein and Iran, the first time the two adversaries have worked together for decades.
The coup is a direct reaction.
The leaders install Pedro Carmona as president, but after two days of street protests and a widespread refusal of the military rank-and-file to support their commanders, the coup collapses and Chávez returns to power.
To come: In 2013, Venezuela will accept major Russian and Chinese investment. In 2015, the Obama administration will impose the first of US sanctions preventing the sale of oil, labelling Venezuela a “national security threat” as a terrorist-supporting state. Trump will deal a body blow in 2017 by targeting banking and SWIFT payments, crippling their economy in 2019 when he sanctions the oil companies. The sanctions hit 90% of Venezuela’s economy, plunging the oil-rich country into poverty. In 2022, the Bank of England will purloin over $1 billion of Venezuela’s gold reserves.

21 March 2002, CHINA’S FIRST COMPLAINT TO THE WTO
China and others join action brought by EU concerning US restrictions on steel in violation of WTO terms. On 10 December 2003, the US informs the parties that President Bush has terminated all of the measures subject to the dispute. 

11 December 2001, CHINA JOINS THE WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION
President Bush signs a proclamation giving China permanent normal trade relations with the US only days after China joins the WTO on 11 December. Was the Bush admin only fattening the golden goose? Were they lulling China into passivity and getting them onside until the US had crushed Iraq? After all, Bush repeats his claim that China is a strategic competitor in 2005. In 2001, China is the USA’s largest trading partner. For the next seven years, relations largely improve.

11 September 2001: TERRORIST ATTACKS ON AMERICA – THE WAR ON TERROR
Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda are held responsible for the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington DC which kill 2,977 people. Afghanistan is invaded the following month. In a welter of Dodgy Dossier disinformation about weapons of mass destruction (WMD), Saddam Hussein is also blamed and Iraq is marked for war. The UK anti-war movement takes off.

Stopping the Iraq War 2001-3 20th anniversary: How the press was done.
In 2001, Anna Chen established and ran three press campaigns. They were the Foot and Mouth Disease smear of UK Chinese by part of the Blair administration; the Socialist Alliance general election campaign challenging an increasingly rightward Labour Party; the third revived a moribund Stop the War by creating their anti-Iraq war press campaign when they wouldn’t even issue a press release on the grounds that they refused to deal with “the bourgeois press”. These last events propelled the long-serving but little-known Labour backbench MP Jeremy Corbyn into the public spotlight.
2001 was a busy year for presswork even before the September 11 attacks in the USA.
In March, we had woken up to lurid headlines splashed across the media accusing UK Chinese of starting the previous year’s Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak which had brought the British countryside to its knees, and which Prime Minister Tony Blair was still failing to bring under control …
Relieved that we’d headed off disaster, I was able to concentrate on the next press campaign: the Socialist Alliance’s run in the summer’s General Election. After three years of New Labour’s betrayals of their own constituents, a danger grew that the electorate would grow so disappointed in Blair’s rightward drift that they would abandon Labour for the Far Right. …
So, by the time we watched two airliners smash into the World Trade Centre on 11 September, I was as ready for the challenge as I could ever be. …
READ MORE >>>

1 April 2001 THE HAINAN INCIDENT AND SPY PLANE COLLISION
Only ten weeks after George W Bush is inaugurated as president, an American navy EP-3 surveillance plane flies off Hainan province in the South China Sea and collides with a PLA J-8II Interceptor jet. The Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, dies. The American plane with 24 crew makes an emergency landing without permission on Hainan island. The crew is released when the US apologises after a 11-day stand-off. The disassembled plane yields important information and is returned to the US six months later in Russian aircraft where it is repaired and eventually returned to duty.

The Foot and Mouth Disease Outbreak Campaign of 2001  
Anna Chen organised the press campaign for the UK Chinese action that surprised everyone by  fighting back against being scapegoated in March 2001 by the government for Tony Blair’s failure to deal with the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak that brought rural Britain to its knees. She was also a member of the delegation that negotiated with Minister Nick Brown in the wake of the scandal. 
It is very Goebbelsesque to associate a scapegoated minority with filth and pestilence but, a few months after George W Bush labelled China a strategic competitor in his 2000 election campaign, this is exactly what Tony Blair’s government tried to do to the Chinese in Britain … until we fought back. 
When Britain suffered a severe outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) in 2001, the countryside was full of burning pyres of animals as the New Labour government got it desperately wrong. The Chinese community suddenly found itself scapegoated for the outbreak in a lunatic briefing by a northern outpost of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF) to The Times. 
Such was the degree of the disaster that farmers were committing suicide as livelihoods were lost, and anger was beginning to be diverted away from the government and onto one of the minority communities. Broadsheets and tabloids alike carried lurid headlines such as, “Sheep and Sow Source” as the Chinese were primed for blame. … 
READ MORE >>>

7 November 2000 GEORGE W BUSH ELECTED US PRESIDENT
Well, sort of. Amid talk of butterfly ballots and hanging chads, Florida’s secretary of state Katherine Harris works overtime to purge the electoral rolls, certify Bush votes and stop the recount in this key state. Democrat candidate Al Gore reluctantly concedes defeat after failing to get the recount.

10 October 2000 THE US-CHINA RELATIONS ACT PASSES
Clinton signs the US-China Relations Act, landmark legisation granting China permanent normal trade relations with the US, clearing the path for China to join the WTO. On 11 December the following year, China is formally admitted into the WTO, opening China’s vast market and adding 800 million workers to the world economic system. China begins to buy US debt.

9 March 2000 CLINTON SUPPORTS CHINESE WTO ENTRY
In a speech to Congress, Clinton welcomes China JOINING the World Trade Organisation: “Supporting China’s entry into the WTO is about more than our economic interests,” he says. “It represents the most significant opportunity that we have to create positive change in China since the 1970s, when President Nixon first went there.” .

19 November 1999-2000 STRATEGIC PARTNER VS STRATEGIC COMPETITOR
After Bill Clinton calls China a “strategic partner,” George W Bush, front-runner for the 2000 Republican US presidential nomination, attacks Clinton’s support for a “constructive strategic partnership” with China: “China should be seen as a competitor, not a partner and treated without ill-will but without illusions.”
Imagine that timeline with Gore winning! The neo-cons win.

24 March – 10 June 1999 THE US BOMBS THE CHINESE EMBASSY IN BELGRADE
As part of the Nato campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo war, opposed by China and others as a violation of the UN charter, five American guided bombs hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The attack kills three people, all journalists and injures dozens more, despite Nato being given the coordinates. There are widespread demonstrations in China, and the US and Nato apologise for a “mistake”. The narrative started by Britain’s Observer newspaper, that the embassy was deliberately targeted by the Central Intelligence Agency due to nefarious Chinese activity in the basement, is vigorously quashed by Madeleine Albright, George Tenet, Robin Cook and others. Sino-American relations temporarily freeze.

1998 CLINTON IN CHINA
Reciprocating China’s President Jiang Zemin’s visit to the United States the previous year, Clinton begins a nine-day visit to China, the first by a US president for more than a decade. The public highlight is a live televised press conference with Jiang, in which the two leaders have a sharp exchange of views on the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989 (see Wikileaks cables June 2011). They both agree to disagree. On the trip, Clinton reassures his hosts of America’s benign intentions: “We see China at a moment in history when your glorious past is matched by your present sweeping transformation and the even greater promise of your future.” He declares the “three no’s”: that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence, “two Chinas” or “one China, one Taiwan” policies, or Taiwan’s membership in international organisations where statehood is required. This is also the year that the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupts, rendering Clinton politically vulnerable to his detractors. China suffers extreme floods.

24 October 1997 PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON CALLS FOR CHINA PARTNERSHIP
China’s President Jiang Zemin visits America 26 October-3 November – the first by a Chinese leader in 12 years.
In the run-up to the summit, President Bill Clinton argues for “constructive engagement” with China: “Isolation of China is unworkable, counter-productive and potentially dangerous. Military, political and economic measure to do such a thing would find litte support among our allies around the world.” The summit agrees cooperation on arms control, technology, health policy, education, drug smuggling, the environment – and, most importantly, steps towards normalisation of US-China trade and Chinese accession to the World Trade Organisation.

1 July 1997 IN THE BEGINNING … THE END OF BRITISH COLONISATION OF HONG KONG AND THE START OF US PARTNERSHIP – HONG KONG IS RETURNED TO CHINA
China regains sovereignty over the city and its region after 156 years of British rule. Hong Kong was ceded to Great Britain after the first of the 19th century Opium Wars under the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, with Kowloon and Stonecutters Island added in 1860 and the New Territories in 1898.
According to the Sino British Joint Declaration, signed by Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping in 1984, “The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will enjoy a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs which are the responsibilities of the Central People’s Government.”

Page 3: Shakedown Timeline 2020 to the Present. Covid, Joe Biden’s presidency to Trump’s 2nd term

Page 2: Shakedown Timeline 2010-2020. Obama’s Pivot-to-Asia to Donald Trump’s first presidency

Page 1: (This page) Shakedown Timeline 1997-2010. Hong Kong Handover and WTO entry to President Barack Obama’s Pivot to Asia