Photo, left: Michael Pillsbury and Board member Susan Pillsbury at the Washington National Opera's 2010 Opera Ball. Photo by Tony Powell. 
See Hour 1, Block B, Michael Pillsbury, senior East Asian analyst, in re:  his just-released book, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. 
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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW  Co-hosts; Gordon Chang, Forbes.com. Dr. David M. Livingston, The Space Show.
Hour One
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Arthur Waldron, Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, in re: China's 2015 military parade .  Xi Jinping has reorganized National Day, will have that parade instead on Sept 3 to memorialize "the War of Japanese Aggression," i.e., WWII.  This is Against Mao's policy, which was never to speak of WWII at all because he'd refused to let the Communists fight in that war. In late August 19__, Mao told his generals not to engage Japanese forces directly. [Reminiscent of Chiang, who just stole most of the money and materiel.]  A secret UD S mission named Spaniel went the occupied areas, found not the CCP fighting the Land of the Rising Sun but a plain peace.  Now Xi is trying to get the Chinese populace worked up, so he's uncorking national sentiment against Japan in order to have a military confrontation with Japan for his own self-aggrandizement.  . . .  The US can avoid all this China-Japan mess except, if China so much as fires a shotgun, US-Japan treaties kick in.   . . .  Aggression is like a fire in your house: put it out immediately.  Xi is grasping at power with unprecedented speed. Mene mene.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Michael Pillsbury, senior East Asian analyst, in re:  his just-released book, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.   The Chinese metaphor for something in reversal: "the long game."  Here, it cones from a 2010 book by a Chinese general: we're now in year 65; quotes Mao in a secret statement: "China's greatest contribution to Mankind is to surpass America This will take 50 to 75 years", starting in 1955. In 2049 they expect to have tripe the US GDP. It's about patience and craftiness, using foreign direct investment, intell, research, diplomacy – all  possible methods to accomplish this.   Highest levels of US govt don’t understand Chinese competitiveness and disdain China – which China comfortably uses.  CCP has threatened: "If you don’t share your technology with us, we'll cause trouble."  Reagan: "The goal of our China policy is to make China strong."  On China Obama has been tougher than G  W  Bush: fair trade, managed trade, human rights, bilateral investment treaty terms , the Trans-Pacific Partnership.   We have to get more serious about our own competitiveness: tax reform  to bring the trillion dollars back to the US –been under discussion for ten years, there's no sense of China breathing down our neck. Foreign Policy Begins at Home, Richard Haas, and, That Used to Be Us, Thomas Friedman. So far, only one US presidential aspirant who's written a out this: Marco Rubio.   US needs to quit supporting the Chinese hawks. When someone says, "The Communist Party is above the Chinese constitution," the US needs to speak up about this, 
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Michael Pillsbury, Senior Fellow & Director of the Center for Chinese Strategy, Hudson Institute. Areas of expertise: East Asia & the Pacific,  Defense Strategy, National Security. " In The Hundred-Year Marathon, the distinguished defense and national security policy advisor Michael Pillsbury asserts that since its founding, the People’s Republic of China has outwitted the U.S. with the goal of restoring China to its rightful place atop the global hierarchy. Based on work that earned Pillsbury the CIA Director’s Exceptional Performance Award, the book incorporates interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified national security documents to challenge the misguided assumptions in Washington about a gradually reforming China."
Michael Pillsbury is a distinguished defense policy adviser, former high-ranking government official, and author of numerous books and reports on China. During the Reagan administration, Pillsbury was Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and responsible for implementation of the program of covert aid known as the Reagan Doctrine. In 1975-76, while an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Pillsbury published articles in Foreign Policy and International Security recommending that the United States establish intelligence and military ties with China. The proposal, publicly commended by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, later became U.S. policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations.
Pillsbury served on the staff of four U.S. Senate Committees from 1978-1984 and 1986-1991. As a staff member, Pillsbury drafted the Senate Labor Committee version of the legislation that enacted the US Institute of Peace in 1984. He also assisted in drafting the legislation to create the National Endowment for Democracy and the annual requirement for a DOD report on Chinese military power.
In 1992, under President George H. W. Bush, Pillsbury was Special Assistant for Asian Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, reporting to Andrew W. Marshall, Director of Net Assessment. Pillsbury is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Pillsbury is the author of China Debates the Future Security Environment (NDU Press, 2000) and editor of  Chinese Views of Future Warfare (NDU Press, 1998)
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: William J. Borucki, NASA Ames Research Center, in re: Kepler 444 is 11.2 billion years old, twice the age of our beautiful Solar System.   This surprised us to find out because we thought that at that early stage there wasn't that much [solid] material around. Stars must have occurred quickly, then other stars came along and built planetary systems.  . . .  Supernovas sterilize life. These planets circle their suns in ten days, thus are so close that they'd have rivers of molten lead, for example.    . . . When we bean yeas ago, we had to guess how many planets we'd find or NASA would have refused to fund us.    . . . Still three to ten billion planets with several bullion about Earth-size in the habitable zone.  Do they have an atmosphere? water?  Kepler is our first step in our own galaxy.   Can see Kepler 444 with binoculars, nest in summertime, around Vega, part of the summer triangle.  Panspermia.    444 is cooler than our Sun but is part of a triple star system.  Planets come from a molecular cloud that's been disturbed, forms a star and planets at the same time.   . . . This discovery has been humbling; twice the age of Earth is a long time for changes. 
Wednesday  4 February 015  / Hour 1, Block D: Martin Fackler, NYT, in re:  to Japanese nationals killed horrifyingly by ISIS.  PM Abe responds unusually, with much rage.  Began with "Jihadi John" from ISIS with Brit accent threatening their lives. First one was decapitated, then the next one, also. Heartbreaking, emotionally wrenching ordeal for Japan and also a wake-up call.  Japan had thought it was immune from such events by being uninvolved in faraway security and terrorism issues.   Still and again the divide in Japan: aggression vs passivity.  The first, with Mr Abe, involves easing some mil restrictions; the second blames Mr Abe for having been collegial with Jordan in the first place.    MacArthur on Japanese tendencies: after years of no evident change, it suddenly turns on a dime.  Victory  Day of Chinese People's Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, [probably] on 3 September.
PM Abe responds unusually, with much rage. : When Islamic State militants posted a video over the weekend showing the grisly killing of a Japanese journalist, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reacted with outrage, promising “to make the terrorists pay the price.”  Such vows of retribution may be common in the West when leaders face extremist violence, but they have been unheard of in confrontation-averse Japan — until now. The prime minister’s call for revenge after the killings of the journalist, Kenji Goto, and another hostage, Haruna Yukawa, raised eyebrows even in the military establishment, adding to a growing awareness here that the crisis could be a watershed for this long pacifist country.
“Japan has not seen this Western-style expression in its diplomacy before,” Akihisa Nagashima, a former vice minister of defense, wrote on Twitter. “Does he intend to give Japan the capability to back up his words?”  As the 12-day hostage crisis came to a grim conclusion with . . .
Hour Two
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Fraser Howie, co-author of Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise, in re: Chinese Natl Bureau of Statistics is heavily influenced by politics, whereas   . . .    Chinese economy has been slowing down for a long time - much faster than the govt would like - and it can’t do much about it. Reserve rate was cut for more lending, but no one wants to borrow since the economic facts are bleak. Govt has tried an increase of subsidies and state stimulus for the past year – into a slowing economy.  Xi's deception: deception is war [see: Sun-tzu];  his audience is foreigners and, to some extent, he's deceiving his compatriots about the severity of the economic problems. Cannot admit that the model's broken. Ultimately it's [foundering on] a political framework of nonaccountability. China is not independent of any law of economic. What they cannot censor is what's happening in New York, Vancouver, SF, Sydney: huge Chinese capital flight. Wouldn't be happening were the growth in fact the 7.4% that the CCP claims.  Their very system is based on Utopian fantasies. Truth does not factor highly in Chinese Communist Party history, It’s the "radiant future" of the Soviets. If they give that up, then it’s an admission that it’s all over.  Self-deception and getting the money out.  Ordinary people in China can’t export their capital. 
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Pater Navarro, professor at the University of California, Irvine and producer of documentary Death by China, in re: China builds new aircraft carrier but deletes [on Internet] news report of its doing so.    Chinese shipyards as though 1942 in the US – grinding out destroyers, cruisers, carriers, a mil navy to overwhelm the US in 2020  US media ignore this. If you run an aircraft carrier fifty miles off the Philippines, it’s still scary.  Coming soonest: exceptional arms based on material stolen from the US, esp the F35. Obama Adm wasn’t to keep this secret [because it’s inconvenient news]. The battle ship  is an extremely vulnerable weapon, only as good as its air wing.  US would be much smarter to produce boomers – and hen there's the third.  The US navy in the Asian Pacific is 7,000 mi from home base, using asymmetric . . .   What we – the US - really need is Virginia-class attack subs for he island chains. From the Chinese POV, aircraft carriers is sensible, because it’s trying to intimidate, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, et al., which can be done with aircraft carriers there, A Chinese coast guar vessel rammed fishing boats near Scarborough Shoals – which it seized recently. Japan now being encouraged by the US to patrol the South China Sea.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block C:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  . . .  Ever since Ma dies in 1976, the Party's raison d'etre has been economic improvement; now, "the new normal" of economic beneficence no longer obtains so Xi Jinping is stirring up nationalism with Chinese military aggression expended from India to northern Japan. "Cultural genocide," as HH the Dalai Lama says, in Tibet and Xinjiang; neither Tibetans nor Uyghurs consider themselves to be Chinese, to the point of Uyghurs's calling their home "East Turkestan."  Once again, Chinese boats ram Filipino fishing boats in order to preen in front of a domestic Chinese audience. However Indonesians, Filipinos, Indians, all see disaster; and the US needs to do something as we slide toward war. 
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: David Feith, Wall Street Journal Asia in Hong Kong, in re: Hong Kong.  . . . Even HK activists who aren’t reaching out to DC and London are pushing for democratic right and assume that the Western world will naturally support them. This is idealistic: London doesn't want to  put its trade relations with China tat risk, refuses to point to Beijing's broken promises Eke in DC, although that seems to be changing with a bipartisan bill on Capitol Hill and also the 2016 elections.  This criticism might encourage China to soften its position on Hong Kong, as it’s loath to become a global target of criticism.   The 2016 election will not be the 1992 US election – back then, China wasn't aggressively trying to take over the East and South China Seas.   A Useful Hong Kong Rebuke: China’s betrayal of its promises becomes a U.S. political issue.   London Kowtow on Hong Kong: The Foreign Office endorses Beijing’s version of democracy.  Firebombing Hong Kong Democrats: Attacks on Jimmy Lai highlight the erosion of press freedom.  The Chinese Empire’s Burning Peripheries: Crackdowns in Hong Kong and Xinjiang threaten Taiwan—and regional peace.   Abe’s New Year Resolution: Honesty about World War II will bolster Japan’s standing in Asia.   Madam Xu’s Party Line: Beijing confirms that Confucius Institutes subvert Western academic freedom.
Hour Three
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block A: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re: Obama Reportedly Wasn't Pleased With Mitt Romney's 2012 Concession Phone Call  President Barack Obama was displeased with Mitt Romney's 2012 ...  Mitt Romney would be president right now (if we linked electoral votes to congressional results)  How the media helped sink Mitt Romney   Second Part on the Walker boom, and the inevitability of Bush reaising $100 million.  No, that poll didn't show Jeb Bush is the only Republican who can beat Hillary  Jeb Bush is best positioned to take on the former secretary of state. The poll concluded that ...   Oliver Willis points out Jeb Bush relationship to Fox News, pwnage ensues    Politico's Michael Schiavo Smear: Jeb Bush 'Put Me Through Hell'
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Monica Crowley, Fox, & Washington Times Online opinion editor; in re:  Jeb Bush coming to Iowa in March  Jeb Bush will make his Iowa debut of the 2016 presidential election cycle next month. Amid copious speculation about whether the center-right ...    Bush to pitch 'reform conservatism' in Detroit  Scott Walker works to harness national donor network for White House run  The early morning attraction: Scott Walker, who stood before a rolling golf course and laid.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block C: David Hawkings, CQ, in re: Deep-sixing 529s could add up to zero for the tax overhaul.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:   Seb Gorka, Marine Corps University & Breitbart, in re: Orwell and the Administration: the White House as of Ministry of Truth.
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/01/27/1419241112.abstract  ; http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/04/the-mysterious-and-unchanging-2-billion-year-old-creature-that-would-make-darwin-smile/
Hour Four
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution's A Day at the Races, in re: Jeb, Detroit and Ghosts of Bushes Past
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Rick Fisher, Janes Defense Weekly, in re:  China, Argentina set for defence collaboration, Malvinas-class OPV deal Richard D Fisher Jr, Washington, D.C. - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly   Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner* is expected to sign agreements with China to increase military co-operation, including construction of new warships for the Argentine Navy, during a visit to Beijing on 3-5 February, according to media reports.  The expanded level of Argentine-Chinese military co-operation, which has been about a year in preparation, follows the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on 29 October 2014 by an Argentine-Chinese Joint Committee on Co-operation in the Field of Defence Technology and Industry. The actual joint development programmes were finalised during a visit by a Chinese defence trade delegation to Buenos Aires in late January.
Argentine reports indicate the agreement to be signed in Beijing could cover co-production in Argentina of the Norinco VN1 wheeled armoured personnel carrier (APC) and co-operation in building a new ice-breaker, naval tugboats, mobile hospitals, and new warships for the Argentine Navy.  In late 2014 the Argentine government reportedly accepted a Chinese offer to meet its long-standing requirement for a new class of offshore patrol vessel. Over the last decade Argentina has considered purchasing designs from Brazil, Germany, and Spain, but China has reportedly succeeded in selling a more capable warship: a version of the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation's (CSIC) P18 export corvette. Somewhat controversially, this vessel will be known as the Malvinas class, after the Argentine name for the Falkland Islands: a UK sovereign territory that Argentine forces invaded in April 1982 before being defeated by a British task force in . . .
*  Pres Kirchner was about to be indicted for criminality (and, in effect, treason) until the prosecutor who issued the warrant was found murdered several days ago.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Paul Gregory, Hoover, in re: Putin shrugs off oligarchs's opposition to his holy war policies.
Wednesday  4 February 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:
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