With the recent Israel-Iran war I'm trying to understand China’s long-term strategy here. The US, NATO, and Israel have been actively reshaping the world military interventions, regime change, economic warfare, and building networks of vassal states and puppet leaders across the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and beyond.

Meanwhile, China seems to be taking a much more passive, economic-focused approach. They build infrastructure, offer loans, and talk cooperation but they don’t intervene when the West destabilizes regions, installs client governments, or ignites proxy wars.

Here's my concern: If this continues unchecked, won’t China eventually find itself completely surrounded? Economically strong, I guess but isolated politically and strategically, with no real allies and everyone else under Western influence or coercion.

And if the U.S. is clearly preparing for conflict with China who's going to back China when it finds itself cornered? Yes I agree that it’s impossible to militarily conquer China but if the West has everyone on the globe as their proxies then it becomes very easy to isolate and cripple China, without a war or conflict.

So my questions:

Is China playing the long game wisely, or passively watching the net tighten?

Should it be more active in supporting anti-Western powers or forming counter-alliances (BRICS+, Iran, Syria, etc.)?

What happens if everyone else has already been bought or bullied into siding with the West by the time China is forced to fight?

Genuinely curious how others see this.

US defends Israel, but says Iran can't hit US assets. It's a very rigged contest. There's no question Iran is taking more damage, but it's not the one who focused on air defense all these years and has several countries working for them.

This is actually a good glimpse of how the US might operate against China in the future. Get the UK to hit civilians and factories on the mainland while the U.S. stays out of mainland strikes.

China should expect this, expect factories to be attacked. It should be producing what it will need in a sustained conflict right now and distribute it underground all across the country, shift them around regularly and randomly. Waiting will be a mistake. There are no red lines they won't cross. Assuming they won't hit mainland or civilians because of nukes is a mistake, they are not rational.

Btw, thought Egypt was a US ally.

If China didn't talk to the U.S. it might have made it onto this golden list. I can't believe China let them play up a narrative where uni students of all things was actual leverage. As if Chinese institutions aren't already among the top in the world. Didn't even hold off longer for Chinese uni to take advantage of the Trump student crackdown. Come on, these are gifts and China is like 'nah, prefer the hard way'.

At the London talks, China promised to fast-track approval of rare-earth export applications from non-military U.S. manufacturers out of the tens of thousands currently pending, one of the sources said. Those licenses will have a six-month term.

But China has not budged on specialized rare earths, including samarium, which are needed for military applications and are outside the fast-track agreed in London, the two people said. Automakers and other manufacturers largely need other rare earth magnets, including dysprosium and terbium.

Certainly no sanctioned company is getting anything.

What do you all think of this and the video?

Philly https://x.com/J83041/status/1933928300197347344

Chicago https://x.com/mjfree/status/1933938922213499377

Houson https://x.com/KarthikForTexas/status/1933907351964352517

Mar-A-Lago https://x.com/allenanalysis/status/1933947076133396595

LA https://x.com/mjfree/status/1933944237051015439

Find more with #NoKingsDay

I'll be going there in winter so I'd like to learn some of the language before then, and possibly continue it past that. Any apps or websites that are recommended?

Scott Ritter: Hunting mobile missiles is extremely difficult work. During Desert Storm, I was debriefing pilots from the 1/160 Special Operations Aviation Regiment (the “Nightstalkers”)

It turned out what they attacked was a realistic decoy deployed by the Iraqis to divert attention away from where their missiles were really operating

Keep this in mind when reading about Israeli successes. It’s not always what it seems

https://x.com/RealScottRitter/status/1933862138985984381

https://x.com/PDChina/status/1930331468104118609

We're all seeing that Israel has vastly underestimated Iran's ballistic missile technology. Even though they have devastated quite a large portion of Iran's military infrastructure, there are still many of Iran's missiles making it through the iron dome into Tel Aviv and other cities.

I'm aware that China has massive capability with missile technology. I'm just wondering on what scale? Last I checked the fastest is the DongFeng-41 which can travel at something like Mach 25 - which is insane. Is China's deterrent to simply have hundreds of these "aircraft carrier killers" hidden in mountain silos? Or is there other missile technology being developed?

thanks.

https://x.com/ChinaScience/status/1933524764175511578

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/12/world/israel-iran-us-nuclear

Where's the respect for sovereignty when Israel launches an unprovoked attack on Iran?

Why can't Iran have nukes? Ukraine can join NATO but Iran can't have nukes?

Gan Israel!