I finally went over to Bluesky to find TS after it appeared he wasn't coming back to X anytime soon. I found a link from Tim on Bluesky to his worthwhile May 15 article on US military posture in the Far East. The backdrop to the summit if you will.

Let me get this out of the way first, because when my internet was down, I went back to a copy of Orientalism to read, still some way to go to finish it. When I got the internet back this from Jesse Watters came up. This is the Fox version of Orientalism, overt racism, will to power, delusions, etc. Everyone's an expert on China now, ya know.

Jesse Watters: 'over 20K McDonald’s, Taco Bells, and KFCs in China'

'Once US gets fast food into a country, that’s IT'

'They start listening to our music, marrying our women — just kidding, we don’t allow that'

'That’s basically now an American COLONY' pic.twitter.com/8vccNCFE53

— RT (@RT_com) May 14, 2026

The idea that there is some kind of US cultural wave that will overcome China's cultural, political and economic momentum is absurd. In fact the opposite is now happening.

Back to the US-China rivalry, I would like to point out at the risk of repeating myself, the key to Thucydides' history. It is the moral element represented by the Melian dialogue, "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." In other words the rule of the jungle, the folly of Athens. This is the lesson of a moral archetype not a historical cycle. Addressing the problem as the so called "Thucydides trap" to put the problem in terms to which a nihilistic west can relate is a diplomatic device of a sort to avoid giving too much offense. The idea of ethics in government is just a bridge too far for the Orientalist West, which has yet to shed it's de facto imperialist hubris. Put the lesson in less offensive terms that USians can understand. It must be a historical trap for the unwary, n'est pas?

Xi, Trump, and the Invisible Elephant in the Room in East Asia

Nobody in the US media, right or left, will talk about the enormous US military base structure in Japan and South Korea that would be the front lines in any war with China over Taiwan
Tim Shorrock
May 15, 2026

Eighty miles south of the DMZ that divides the two Koreas, the Pentagon operates its single largest base outside of North America, Camp Humphreys. The vast complex is headquarters for the 600,000-strong U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command, which is still commanded during wartime by a U.S. general - a situation that President Lee Jae Myung is desperately trying to change.

Across the East Sea in Japan, the U.S. military stations over 75,000 soldiers in bases from Hokkaido to Okinawa, much to the annoyance and anger of Okinawa citizens. Midway up its main island, close to the beaches where U.S. forces invaded in April 1945, sits the giant Kadena U.S. Air Force base, the largest in the Pacific. It is home to the most sophisticated spy planes in the U.S. arsenal. They constantly fly over Korean skies and the Taiwan Straits, particularly when tensions with North Korea or China are high. Even though some 70 percent of U.S. bases in Japan are located in Okinawa, the islands are rarely mentioned by the U.S. media.

“Japan is a vital anchor for the US military presence in East Asia, and without it, the US Western Pacific position falls apart,” military journalist Aaron Spray claimed recently.

South Korea, meanwhile, is under virtual assault by the Trump administration and its MAGA followers, who believe Lee is too close to China and is uncomfortable with the United States using its bases in Korea as an attack platform for any future war. As Simone Chun writes on her Substack this week, “Lee’s refusal to turn South Korea into a pawn in a U.S.-led proxy war in East Asia has intensified tensions, prompting a series of aggressive retaliations from Washington.” According to Chun, these include:

Rhetorical attacks: USFK Commander Xavier Brunson has openly disparaged the Lee administration’s policies, dismissing the push for sovereign military control as “political expediency.” He has also drawn sharp criticism within Korea for his proposal to link the military intelligence and command systems of South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines into a “kill web.”
...

Here's another article also on May 15 from CounterPunch by Tings Chak-

Trump’s State Visit to Beijing and the New Cold War on Asia

An Architecture of Containment

Iran is not the only war backdrop. Across the region, the architecture of US military presence is being expanded and accelerated. The same week of Trump’s visit, the largest joint military exercises in Philippine history concluded—Balikatan 2026, with seventeen thousand foreign troops from seven nations, Japanese anti-ship missiles positioned on Filipino soil, and a new US fuel depot in the south of the country. In central Luzon, the Philippines has granted 4,000 acres in New Clark City to the Pax Silica Initiative—a US-controlled high-tech zone operating under US common law and granted diplomatic immunity, on a lease renewable for 99 years.

On 28 April, the commander of US Forces in Korea, General Xavier Brunson, told the Japan Times that Washington is building a ‘kill web‘—a networked system fusing Korea, Japan and the Philippines into a single architecture against China, Russia and North Korea. In August 2025, Trump told reportersof the US base at Pyeongtaek that he would like to “get ownership of the land where we have a massive military base” in South Korea, a country where the US has 66 military bases. In Japan, military spending is being doubled—the largest rearmament since 1945—with 400 US Tomahawk missiles purchased, a project that has continued and accelerated under right-wing Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. For Taiwan, Trump authorized $11 billion in arms in December, the largest package in history, and has told the press he intends to discuss arms sales—with Xi himself.

To carry on with the law of the jungle theme:

Here's a translation of the script from the last several minutes of Episode Six of Swords to Plowshares, a Chinese historical drama series concerning a period of disunity and chaos:

You just stand here discussing to whom the Emperor's throne should be abdicated?
The Emperor, is about to abdicate!
What you should ask, and care about, is why the Emperor is abandoning his empire, isn't it?
This young lord of Wuyue, we have encountered a great upheaval and the situation is perilous. The Emperor voluntarily...
I also wonder how this perfectly fine capital has fallen into such a condition.

We pay our respects to Your Majesty. You...
All of you...
Propriety, order, moral tradition...
You, are all here to play games with me?
We, your subjects, simply wish to ask Your Majesty, why you would abandon yourself, and cast aside the empire's officials and people?
Young man, do you think this empire is still the same empire from decades ago? That empire perished long ago!
I will tell you what the Emperor is!
The Emperor, is he who has the strongest military power!
Whoever holds the sword can become the Emperor! Whoever wears the armor can become the Emperor!
You wear armor, and you too can become the Emperor!
Take it. Take it.
Yes.
You wear the armor, you carry the sword, you are the Emperor.
The Emperor is above, accept this humble man's bow.
This is the empire now. Rise. This is the way of the world today. Where is there any right or wrong left?
No one needs them. If you are soft-hearted, you deserve to die.
Do you understand?
His Majesty has lost his mind. But we still must not lose it.
Now, let us pay our last respects to His Majesty.

English translation is from the youtube transcript. I did try to review it as best I could with dictionaries. I won't say how many hours it took to get through this interesting episode.

Swords Into Plowshares (TV series)

the 48-episode drama depicts the final years of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period and the early Song dynasty, focusing on Qian Hongchu, the last king of Wuyue, and his historic decision to peacefully surrender his kingdom to the Song in 978 CE—a rare instance of bloodless national unification in Chinese history[4][5][6]. The series premiered on CCTV-1 on January 23, 2026,

The Wikipedia write up on the series has an AI warning, unsourced references, etc. I didn't rely on it, just using that paragraph above for convenience. I actually found google AI suppressing the latest Watters' expression of racism, when I searched for the video.

几万里梦醒无争

I'll try to load the OST, no joy last time-