{"id":168068,"date":"2020-09-07T12:00:36","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T11:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=168068"},"modified":"2020-09-07T12:17:49","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T11:17:49","slug":"everything-going-according-to-plan-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/09\/everything-going-according-to-plan-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything Going According to Plan in China"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n
\n

The contours of China’s long-term strategy for the new Cold War are quickly coming into view.<\/em><\/p>\n

24 Aug 2020 – <\/em>Let\u2019s start with the story of an incredibly disappearing summit.Every August, the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) converges to the town of Beidaihe, a seaside resort some two hours away from Beijing, to discuss serious policies that then coalesce into key planning strategies to be approved at the CCP Central Committee plenary session in October.<\/p>\n

The Beidaihe ritual was established by none other than Great Helmsman<\/em> Mao<\/em>, who loved the town where, not by accident, Emperor Qin<\/em>, the unifier of China in the 3rd<\/sup> century B.C., kept a palace.<\/p>\n

2020 being, so far, a notorious Year of Living Dangerously, it\u2019s no surprise that in the end Beidaihe was nowhere to be seen. Yet Beidaihe\u2019s invisibility does not mean it did not happen.<\/p>\n

Exhibit 1 was the fact that Premier Li Keqiang<\/em> simply disappeared from public view for nearly two weeks \u2013 after President Xi chaired a crucial Politburo gathering <\/a>in late July where what was laid out was no less than China\u2019s whole development strategy for the next 15 years.<\/p>\n

Li Keqiang resurfaced by chairing a special session of the all-powerful State Council, just as the CCP\u2019s top ideologue, Wang Huning <\/em>\u2013 who happens to be number 5 in the Politburo \u2013 showed up as the special guest at a meeting of the All China Youth Federation.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s even more intriguing is that side by side with Wang, one would find Ding Xuexiang<\/em>, none other than President Xi\u2019s chief of staff, as well as three other Politburo members.<\/p>\n

In this \u201cnow you see them, now you don\u2019t\u201d variation, the fact that they all showed up in unison after an absence of nearly two weeks led sharp Chinese observers to conclude that Beidaihe in fact had taken place. Even if no visible signs of political action by the seaside had been detected. The semi-official spin is that no get-together happened at Beidaihe because of Covid-19.<\/p>\n

Yet it\u2019s Exhibit 2 that may clinch the deal for good. The by now famous end of July Politburo meeting chaired by Xi in fact sealed the Central Committee plenary session in October. Translation: the contours of the strategic road map ahead had already been approved by consensus. There was no need to retreat to Beidaihe for further discussions.<\/p>\n

Trial balloons or official policy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The plot thickens when one takes into consideration a series of trial balloons that started to float a few days ago in select Chinese media. Here are some of the key points.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. On the trade war front, Beijing won\u2019t shut down US businesses already operating in China. But companies which want to enter the market in finance, information technology, healthcare and education services will not be approved.<\/li>\n
  2. Beijing won\u2019t dump all its overwhelming mass of US Treasuries in one go, but \u2013 as it already happens \u2013 divestment will accelerate. Last year, that amounted to $100 billion. Up to the end of 2020, that could reach $300 billion.<\/li>\n
  3. The internationalization of the yuan, also predictably, will be accelerated. That will include configuring the final parameters for clearing US dollars through the CHIPS Chinese system \u2013 foreseeing the incandescent possibility Beijing might be cut off from SWIFT by the Trump administration or whoever will be in power at the White House after January 2021.<\/li>\n
  4. On what is largely interpreted across China as the \u201cfull spectrum war\u201d front, mostly Hybrid War, the PLA has been put into Stage 3 alert \u2013 and all leaves are canceled for the rest of 2020. There will be a concerted drive to increase all-round defense spending to 4% of GDP and accelerate the development of nuclear weapons. Details are bound to emerge during the Central Committee meeting in October.<\/li>\n
  5. The overall emphasis is on a very Chinese spirit of self-reliance, and building what can be defined as a national economic \u201cdual circulation\u201d system: the consolidation of the Eurasian integration project running in parallel to a global yuan settlement mechanism.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Inbuilt in this drive is what has been described as \u201cto firmly abandon all illusions about the United States and conduct war mobilization with our people. We shall vigorously promote the war to resist US aggression (\u2026) We will use a war mindset to steer the national economy (\u2026) Prepare for the complete interruption of relations with the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s unclear as it stands if these are only trial balloons disseminated across Chinese public opinion or decisions reached at the \u201cinvisible\u201d Beidaihe. So all eyes will be on what kind of language this alarming configuration will be packaged when the Central Committee presents its strategic planning in October. Significantly, that will happen only a few weeks before the US election.<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s all about continuity<\/strong><\/p>\n

    All of the above somewhat mirrors a recent debate in Amsterdam on what constitutes the Chinese \u201cthreat\u201d to the West. Here are the key points.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. China constantly reinforces its hybrid economic model \u2013 which is an absolute rarity, globally: neither totally publicly owned nor a market economy.<\/li>\n
    2. The level of patriotism is staggering: once the Chinese face a foreign enemy, 1.4 billion people act as one.<\/li>\n
    3. National mechanisms have tremendous force: absolutely nothing blocks the full use of China\u2019s financial, material and manpower resources once a policy is set.<\/li>\n
    4. China has set up the most comprehensive, back to back industrial system on the planet, without foreign interference if need be (well, there\u2019s always the matter of semiconductors to Huawei to be solved).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten year plans and as the meeting chaired by Xi showed, 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049.<\/p>\n

      And continuity is the name of the game \u2013 when one thinks that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence<\/a>, first developed in 1949 and then expanded by Zhou Enlai<\/em> at the Bandung conference in 1955 are set in stone as China\u2019s foreign policy guidelines.<\/p>\n

      The Qiao collective<\/a>, an independent group that advances the role of qiao<\/em> (\u201cbridge\u201d) by the strategically important huaqia<\/em>o (\u201coverseas Chinese\u201d) is on point when they note that Beijing never proclaimed a Chinese model as a solution to global problems. What they extol is Chinese solutions to specific Chinese conditions.<\/p>\n

      A forceful point is also made that historical materialism is incompatible with capitalist liberal democracy forcing austerity and regime change on national systems, shaping them towards preconceived models.<\/p>\n

      That always comes back to the core of the CCP foreign policy: each nation must chart a course fit for its national conditions.<\/p>\n

      And that reveals the full contours of what can be reasonably described as a Centralized Meritocracy with Confucian, Socialist Characteristics: a different civilization paradigm that the \u201cindispensable nation\u201d still refuses to accept, and certainly won\u2019t abolish by practicing Hybrid War.<\/p>\n

      _______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/a><\/em>Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian independent geopolitical analyst. He is a frequent contributor to websites and radio and TV shows ranging from the US to East Asia. He is the former roving correspondent for <\/em>Asia Times Online. He has been a foreign correspondent since 1985, and has lived in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Washington, Bangkok and Hong Kong. Even before 9\/11 he specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central and East Asia, with an emphasis on Big Power geopolitics and energy wars. He is the author of <\/em>Globalistan<\/a> (2007),<\/em> Red Zone Blues<\/a> (2007), <\/em>Obama Does Globalistan<\/a> (2009), <\/em>Empire of Chaos<\/a> (2014) and <\/em>2030<\/a> (2015), all by Nimble Books.<\/em><\/p>\n

      Go to Original – transnational.live<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      24 Aug 2020 – China plans not only in years, but in decades. Five year plans are complemented by ten and 15 year plans. The Belt and Road Initiative is in fact a nearly 40-year plan, designed in 2013 to be completed in 2049. And continuity is the name of the game. The contours of China’s long-term strategy for the new Cold War are quickly coming into view.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":151854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[1149,1037,239,244,331,1044,645,1043,644],"class_list":["post-168068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-asia-and-the-pacific","tag-belt-road","tag-brics","tag-china","tag-development","tag-east-asia","tag-international-trade","tag-sco","tag-silk-roads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}