🇺🇸🇨🇳🇹🇼 — Chinese warplanes have not entered Taiwan's air defense identification zone for about seven days, marking a rare pause in PLA aerial activity after years of near-daily incursions.

📝This step comes amid the war in the Middle East and ahead of a planned Trump–Xi meeting.

#URGENT

🇺🇸❌🇮🇷❗️ — United States President Donald J. Trump announces that NO DEAL will ever take place with the Islamic Republic and that now US is demanding from it nothing but UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

There will be no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER! After that, and the selection of a GREAT & ACCEPTABLE Leader(s), we, and many of our wonderful and very brave allies and partners, will work tirelessly to bring Iran back from the brink of destruction, making it economically bigger, better, and stronger than ever before.

IRAN WILL HAVE A GREAT FUTURE. “MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN (MIGA!).”
Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

🇨🇳🕊🇹🇼 — The Ministry of National Defense of ROC (Taiwan) reports that no Mainland Chinese plane was spotted over Taiwan Island’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) for the seventh day in a row,

That's the longest gap period since at least 2023.

Ironically, it coincides with the ongoing Iranian Crisis, which is approaching seven days, with U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran beginning last Saturday.

🇺🇸❌🇨🇳 China looked at the lessons of 20th century great power conflict and drew the conclusion that military power alone doesn't determine outcomes, upstream industrial capacity does.

The Allies won because of overwhelming industrial might. Japan and Germany lost because they lacked critical industrial inputs. Starved of oil, they were forced into gambles that cost them the war…Japan attacking Pearl Harbor to seize the oil in the Dutch East Indies, Germany marching to the Caucasus to take the Baku oil fields. Input scarcity doesn't just weaken you. It steers your decisions. It pulls decisions away from the optimal plan and toward the necessary plan.

China learned this lesson and decided to be the one holding the chokepoints. By embedding itself so deeply into the upstream supply chains that feed American military production, a conflict would trigger Western industrial paralysis and neuter its ability to fight a long war.

But the chokehold only works if the West doesn't rectify its supply chain vulnerabilities before China is ready to move on Taiwan. So China's central strategic requirement was to delay Western recognition of the threat for as long as possible.

Thus, China's entire foreign policy posture becomes oriented around appearing non-threatening. And it works because it aligns with the economic incentives of Western elites who benefit from cheap inputs and profitable trade. The cost of denial is kept artificially low. Raising the alarm looks like paranoia or protectionism when cheap goods keep flowing and no shots are being fired.

The administration is now racing to unwind its supply chain vulnerability before the conflict window opens. But that takes years, and they face significant inertia, both domestically and among allies who remain naively blind to the risk.

China knows this. So their strategy is to keep the West sleepwalking. Which means they can’t show their hand. If China comes into direct military conflict with the US in order to defend a proxy, the West wakes up. The inertia collapses. The reshoring and remilitarization that China spent decades trying to prevent happens on an emergency timeline.
But the US finally realized it could use this against them.

Since China can’t show its hand until it's ready to move on Taiwan, the US realized that it can turn China's greatest strategic asset, the pacifist disguise, into a structural trap.

They cannot take overtly aggressive action without triggering the Western industrial mobilization their entire strategy depends on preventing.

So the US can eliminate their proxies and China can’t respond without destroying the disguise.

Maduro removed. Cuba strangled. Now Iran.

Beijing must decide if defending the proxy is worth waking the West up? And the answer keeps being no.

Until China’s window to move on Taiwan opens, the pacifist posture that enabled its chokeholds constrains their response to US actions.

Everything the US is doing right now is a race to be ready before that moment arrives. Clear the proxies. Arm the allies. Break the chokeholds. And build new ones of its own.

https://x.com/michaeljmcnair/status/2029707043897028690

Follow @FelipeChannel

🇺🇸❌🇨🇳This right here is the reason China stays quiet on Iran

Everyone losing their mind asking where is Beijing while the US & Israel are bombing a major chinese energy partner and the answer is so brutal in its simplicity that most analysts miss it completely, the empire is eating itself alive and China is already building the replacement.

America just dragged the entire Middle East into a war for Israel & now Saudi arabia, UAE, Kuwait & Qatar are sitting in a room discussing pulling out of US contracts & canceling investment commitments.

The Gulf states, the literal foundation of the petrodollar, the system that has kept the US dollar as world reserve currency since 1974 actively discussing the exit and Beijing did absolutely nothing to make that happen…Washington did it to itself.

But here's what people miss: china saw this coming years ago and already laid the tracks, literally the belt & road Initiative has quietly wired 150 countries into c’hinese infrastructure, ports, railways, highways, fiber optic cables, power grids…while the western media barely covered it.

Saudi Arabia started selling oil to China in yuan in 2023, that alone should have been front page news for a month, the BRICS just expanded to include Saudi arabia UAE and Iran in the samea bloc, China built CIPS as a direct alternative to SWIFT so the entire non western world can settle trade without ever touching the dollar, every single one of these moves was made before a single bomb fell on Iran.

And then there's Africa…the youngest continent on earth, median age 19, projected to reach 2.5 billion people by 2050, the largest workforce the planet has ever seen & China understood 20y ago that whoever builds Africa's infrastructure owns the 21st century, while the US was spending 4 trillion dollars destroying Iraq & Afghanistan China was building railways in Kenya, dams in Ethiopia, ports in Djibouti, highways in Nigeria, tech hubs in Rwanda, stadiums, hospitals, government buildings, telecom networks powered by Huawei across the entire continent.. & they did it without firing a single bullet, no regime change, no sanctions, no lectures on democracy, just concrete steel, fiber optic and longterm contracts.

So when people ask why China stays silent on Iran the answer is that silence is the strategy, every war America fights for Israel costs trillions, destabilizes energy markets, alienates Gulf partners and pushes the entire Global South closer to a system Beijing spent two decades building

The gulf states pivoting right now has zero to do with ideology, Washington turned their entire neighborhood into a warzone to serve Tel Aviv's regional strategy & then asked them to keep buying treasury bonds with a straight face….the math just stopped working and when the math stops working loyalty stops too.

Beijing's silence on Iran is the most patient & most devastating move on the board, China is watching America dismantle its own hegemony in real time while quietly inheriting every alliance Washington burns, it just has to keep building & keep quiet.

Napoleon said never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake, Xi turned that into a 50y doctrine & right now it's paying off faster than even Beijing expected.

https://x.com/BetterCallMedhi/status/2029785088813322376

Follow @FelipeChannel

🇦🇪🛢📈 — Murban Crude Oil, the Emirati Standard Oil price, is now being traded by 100.55 USD/barrel

🇦🇪🛢📈 — Brent Crude Oil is being traded by 91.61 USD/barrel

🇺🇸🇮🇱❌🇮🇷 — 🇺🇸 ISW on 𝕏:

"2/ The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has continued strikes targeting Iranian ballistic missile infrastructure in order to degrade Iranian missile capabilities. The IDF reported on March 5 that Israeli aircraft had struck hundreds of missile launch sites across Iran and rendered over 300 ballistic missile launchers inoperable since February 28. Degrading Iranian air defenses allows US and Israeli aircraft to operate with less risk and greater freedom of operation over Iranian airspace."

🔗 Institute for the Study of War (@TheStudyofWar)

🇫🇷🇺🇸🇮🇱🇮🇷⚡️ — The French Navy aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle (R91) crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean Sea en route to the Middle East.