generalspeaking

Perspectives...in Global Dominion

"As we speak, Beijing is employing a whole-of-government approach, using political, economic, and military tools, as well as propaganda, to advance its influence and benefit its interests in the United States."
"China is also applying this power in more proactive ways than ever before, to exert influence and interfere in the domestic policy and politics of this country."
"After the fall of the Soviet Union, we assumed that a free China was inevitable. Heady with optimism, at the turn of the 21st Century, America agreed to give Beijing open access to our economy and bring China into the World Trade Organization."
"The Chinese Communist Party has also used an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade, including tariffs, quotas, currency manipulation, forced technology transfer, intellectual property theft, and industrial subsidies that are handed out like candy to foreign investment. These policies have built Beijing's manufacturing base, at the expense of its competitors -- especially the United States of America."
"As our National Security Strategy states, 'Competition does not always mean hostility'. As President Trump has made clear, we want a constructive relationship with Beijing, where our prosperity and security grow together, not apart. While Beijing has been moving further away from this vision, China's rulers can still change course, and return to the spirit of 'reform and opening' and greater freedom."
U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence

"Recently, as the U.S. side has been constantly escalating trade friction toward China, it has also adopted a series of actions on the Taiwan issue that harm China's rights and interests, and has made groundless criticism of China's domestic and foreign policies."
"We believe this has been a direct attack on our mutual trust, and has cast a shadow on China-U.S. relations. We demand that the U.S. side stop this kind of mistaken action."
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi

U.S. President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony with China's President Xi Jinping.  Photo: Thomas Peter Pool/Getty Images

Substitute identifying China with all the trade and production, export and import charges levelled at that country with its unprincipled, covert intrigues characterized by espionage so ambitious that it covers every aspect of a nation's GDP, manufacturing, technological advances, international relations, military, science and society and the American Vice-President, without missing a beat, but lauding instead of decrying the drive, initiative, enterprise and entitlement to describe the business acumen and practices of the United States of America.

In the case of China, admittedly, the nature of intrigue, infiltration and threat has been taken to a new level entirely. If one were to reduce the issue to mere and sheer bullying, they would both come up on a scale balancing neatly in common measure. China's worldscale manufacturing and export capabilities on the global market was not simply due to China's aspirations to become the world's most influential and powerful exporter of an entire range of goods more efficiently produced, cheaper to buy and sought after because of their affordability. Consumers the world over wanted cheap and they got it.

Affordability was the consumer byword for manufacturing jobs leaking out of Europe and North America to China where wages were low, and production efficiency, cutting corners and materials substitution verging on the dangerous, led to China's powerhouse marketing status. Giving it the confidence to produce ersatz products mimicking authenticity in chemicals, foodstuffs, pharmaceuticals. China, with its immense population, is able to market internally and still reap untold profits, but power and influence lure it outside itself as well, where territorial ambition and 21st century-style colonization call.

The United States is accustomed to its entitled role as the world bully of note. It has little appreciation for the fact that China outrivals it in population and enterprise, influence and mercantile output. While the United States has long established itself as a 'mentor' to dependent nations in the East, positioning itself as a military support, China's ambitions have not yet led it to similar outposts in the suspicious West, other than covertly and with an eye more to industrial and military espionage irritating its targets no end.

Both the United States and China view themselves as entitled to rule the world, and both offer a double vision of themselves; oppressor and benefactor. China is capturing Africa and the East into its wide embrace with investment and the building of vital infrastructure meant to bring the continent closer to helping it fulfill its need to produce employment for Chinese workers enhancing communication and transportation in a bid to overwhelm emerging economies with interconnected ties prospering China and its subordinate allies by default.

It's a philosophy that has served the U.S. for a long time, and one which went into temporary decline under a president who wanted his country to have a reduced global footprint, to be more modest in its outreach, more confined and refined in its interference abroad, succeeded by a president who has promised to give greater focus and impetus to internal matters, while aggressively damning those countries which have long depended on it for direction and clarity, yet still wedded to the greatness of its international outreach.

China and the United States are simply testing one another's resolve; that of the reigning power and the upstart cannily imitating a proven and true formula of the powerful indulging in what comes naturally, exerting its entitlement to bully its neighbours, its hangers-on, its groupie nations, its dependents -- reminding them occasionally who calls the shots and who obeys the orders. The Chinese focus on infiltration leaves clumsy footprints the U.S. can readily read in the invidious spying  computer chips used by U.S. government agencies giving Beijing access to internal networks of American companies and government. Prodding the U.S. to react.

For shame and Tsk! Tsk! American altruism repaid by Chinese duplicity....!

U.S. President Donald Trump takes part in a welcoming ceremony with China's President Xi Jinping on November 9, 2017 in Beijing, China. (Thomas Peter-Pool/Getty Images)

Labels: China, Economy, Global Influence, Markets, Politics, Rivalry, United States

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 16, 2018