{"id":243414,"date":"2023-09-04T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2023-09-04T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=243414"},"modified":"2023-09-02T05:19:18","modified_gmt":"2023-09-02T04:19:18","slug":"the-real-threat-from-china-theyre-better-at-capitalism-than-we-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/09\/the-real-threat-from-china-theyre-better-at-capitalism-than-we-are\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Threat from China: They\u2019re Better at Capitalism Than We Are"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Gina Raimondo meeting with the Minister of Commerce for the People\u2019s Republic of China Wang Wentao on May 26, 2023.
Office of the United States Department of Commerce, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Aug 2023 – <\/em>The Biden regime\u2019s robotic procession to Beijing proceeds apace. Following Antony Blinken\u2019s fruitless visit in mid\u2013June, we have paid Janet Yellen\u2019s airfare for another fruitless visit, and following Yellen it was the same for John Kerry. This week it is Gina Raimondo\u2019s turn. The secretary of state, the Treasury secretary, the chief climate envoy, and the commerce secretary: What is the point of this parade?<\/p>\n

I cannot but wonder whether these officials are dispatched across the Pacific in descending order of competence. Raimondo, who previously flopped as governor of Rhode Island\u2014except for her plan to cut civil service pensions, an unfortunate success\u2014is mediocrity made flesh. The Chinese must be wondering, with chagrin or amusement or both, who the Biden regime will next send their way.<\/p>\n

The assignment in all these cases is the same: It comes down to \u201ctwo seemingly contradictory responsibilities,\u201d as The New York Times\u2019s Ana Swanson put it in a curtain-raiser last week. She described \u201ca mandate to strengthen U.S. business relations with Beijing while also imposing some of the toughest Chinese trade restrictions in years.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is succinct, although we can live without the \u201cseemingly.\u201d Proposing to conduct routine business while sabotaging China\u2019s competitive position in advanced technologies is prima facie<\/em> a ridiculous idea. But The Times must have its \u201cseemingly,\u201d because it is imperative we pretend the Biden regime thinks sensibly and means well in its relations with the People\u2019s Republic.<\/p>\n

Blinken got nothing done, Yellen got nothing done, Kerry got nothing done, and in Raimondo\u2019s case it is hopeless. The final item on her itinerary is a visit to Disneyland in Shanghai, and you have to credit the secretary\u2019s scheduler for the parting reference to dreams and fantasy. An English friend observes that we Americans are doing a lot of blinkin\u2019 and yellin\u2019 across the Pacific these days. Fair enough, but I think it is more of the former than the latter for the time being. This administration simply has no idea what a sound China policy would look like.<\/p>\n

What is this all about? For a long time now I have concluded that Biden\u2019s foreign policy people match the definition of insanity commonly but mistakenly attributed to Einstein. These people seem to be doing the same thing again and again while expecting a different outcome. But with Raimondo\u2019s visit to Beijing this week I have to revise this assessment. Those running Biden\u2019s national security policies are unimaginative ideologues petrified of diverging from the neoliberal catechism, yes, but they are not insane. I start to see in their dealings with Beijing a diabolical design to which the Chinese are very right to object.<\/p>\n

The Biden administration\u2019s China strategy comes down to parrying, in a word. All the pointless talk is intended to obscure a concerted effort to undermine China\u2019s economy because we cannot compete with it in various strategic sectors, while\u2014part two\u2014buying time to move maximum U.S. military hardware as close to the mainland as possible under the program the Defense Department named a few years ago the Pacific Defense Initiative, the PDI.<\/p>\n

At the horizon, we are likely to see Washington\u2019s trans\u2013Pacific military ambitions trump longstanding trade and investment relationships. This is what \u201cdecoupling\u201d and now \u201cdelinking\u201d are all about. They are warnings to the corporate and financial sectors that their interests, which came first in the decades after the Dengist reforms of the 1980s, will no longer take precedence as the new Cold War Biden constantly denies provoking destroys relations with the mainland.<\/p>\n

Two years ago Raimondo gave an interview to CNBC<\/a>, the financial news network, that more or less announced the Biden regime\u2019s intention to subvert key sectors of China\u2019s economy. She was about to address something called the U.S.\u2013E.U. Trade and Technology Council and told her interlocutor, \u201cIf we really want to slow down China\u2019s rate of innovation, we need to work with Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is useful once in a while to have dumbheads such as Raimondo in high positions, because, without meaning to do so, they can tell you so much more than you are supposed to know. Slowing down China\u2019s impressive advances in high-technology sectors was precisely Washington\u2019s intent by the time Raimondo spoke. The Commerce Department under her direction has since imposed a wide variety of restrictions on U.S. exports to China of semiconductor chips, software systems, and the machinery used to produce both. As Ana Swanson reports, Raimondo is likely to pile on more of these as soon as she returns from Beijing.<\/p>\n

The Biden regime dresses up this profoundly undignified conduct as \u201cnarrowly targeted\u201d to technologies that could be of use to the Chinese military. Jake Sullivan set the tone for all of these visitors to Beijing in a speech at the Brookings Institution last April. \u201cWe are imposing necessary restrictions on specific technology exports,\u201d he explained, \u201cwhile seeking to avoid an outright technological blockade\u2026.\u00a0 The administration intends to maintain a substantial trade relationship with China.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is what Raimondo and all of those who preceded her to China say when explaining their intent: Washington\u2019s sole concern as Raimondo imposes her regime of restrictions is national security, and all else can proceed rosily. It is hard to think of a flimsier dodge. By this standard, she would have to restrict sales of Juicy Fruit gum to the Chinese. What the Biden administration is doing comes down to securitizing the economic relationship. If you have ever doubted that the United States is a failing imperium unwilling to accept 21st<\/sup> century realities, I offer this as proof of the proposition.<\/p>\n

The Chinese know this and have said so many times. I no longer think Blinken, Yellen, et al.<\/em> have any thought of persuading them otherwise on these journeys. That only looks like their intent. Their true purpose is in the way of theatrical, and Americans are their true audience: They must make sure we do not understand Gina Raimondo\u2019s efforts to punch the Chinese well below their belts for what they are: an uncompetitive nation\u2019s attempts to hold back a rising economic power.<\/p>\n

I found that speech Sullivan delivered last spring<\/a> interesting for what he left out as much as for what was in it. There was not a single mention of the U.S. military buildup at the western end of the Pacific.<\/p>\n

Talk about elephants in the living room. The Pentagon is developing the Australian\u2013British\u2013U.S. alliance known as AUKUS, there is the Quad group, comprising the U.S., Australia, India, and Japan, there are these recently and assiduously fortified alliances with Seoul, Tokyo, Manila, and Canberra, and none of this, we hear again and again, has anything to do with surrounding China or providing for the movement of U.S. military capabilities westward toward the mainland. This is only \u201cseemingly\u201d the case, as The Times would put it.<\/p>\n

It is the same as with Raimondo\u2019s projects on the technology side: Neither the Chinese nor anyone else in Asia believes these silly explanations, and no one expects them to do so. Beijing knows very well there is a point to all these apparently pointless visits U.S. officials insist on making. The Biden regime is buying time as it remilitarizes the western end of the Pacific. The only people who are supposed to understand otherwise are Americans. We are not supposed to watch as Washington provokes and prosecutes Cold War II before our eyes. We are supposed to watch as American officials\u2014reasonable, constructive, well-intended\u2014make all efforts to talk to the Chinese in the face of their stubborn reluctance to cooperate.<\/p>\n

This is my revised take on the Blinken\u2013Yellen\u2013Kerry\u2013Raimondo cavalcade across the Pacific. These people are not clods. They are purposefully malicious and, it should go without saying, are making the world even more dangerous than it already is.<\/p>\n

There are two things to think about here. One, the Biden regime\u2019s efforts to obscure what it is up to at the other end of the Pacific is a straight reprise of the first Cold War, which now resides in all but the most important history books as the responsibility of the Soviets. We have a responsibility to render and defend an accurate record so that this does not happen again.<\/p>\n

Two, there is this administration\u2019s immense betrayal of Americans as it aggresses in the Pacific, along with the numerous lost opportunities of which American are deprived. You will find in that Jake Sullivan speech grand and plentiful references to the revival of the American middle class, bipartisan unity, and other such elevated thoughts. Read the speech and then ask: What is this nation\u2019s leadership doing in the cause of a competitive America?<\/p>\n

Are we redoubling efforts to educate our people or are we, diabolically, shutting down access\u2014see the University of West Virginia\u2014to liberal arts education? What are we doing to produce the doctors and scientists we need to find our way in the 21st<\/sup> century? What are we doing to bring the dispossessed into the economy, address drug addiction, and all our other debilitating social ills? What are we doing\u2014seriously doing, I mean\u2014to repair and build out the infrastructure we need? Nothing or not enough are my answers.<\/p>\n

The Chinese challenge could and should be understood as a chance to reinvent America by way of a Great Mobilization, cap \u201cG,\u201d cap \u201cM,\u201d of New Deal magnitude. There is, of course, no more than lip service to any such idea. We are instead sacrificing this historic opportunity to the military-industrial complex, the greed of corporations, and the ambitions of political leaders who lack all principle or any thought for the commonweal.<\/p>\n

Maybe you think, as I do, that none of the Biden officials flying off to Beijing is serious about the true work to be done in our relations with China, or is competent to do it. We must consider, bitterly, that they are perfectly representative of our circumstances as defined by a leadership that is more or less across the board unserious and incompetent to meet the great challenges of our time\u2014China merely one among many.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the <\/em>International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is\u00a0<\/em>Time No Longer: Americans after the American Century.\u00a0His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.\u00a0His website: <\/em>Patrick\u00a0Lawrence<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 scheerpost.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

30 Aug 2023 – The Biden administration\u2019s China strategy comes down to parrying, in a word. All the pointless talk is to obscure an effort to undermine China\u2019s economy because we cannot compete with it, while\u2014part two\u2014buying time to move maximum U.S. military hardware as close to China as possible under the Pacific Defense Initiative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":243416,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[867,232,244,803,70],"class_list":["post-243414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglo-america","tag-anglo-america","tag-capitalism","tag-china","tag-competition","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243414","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=243414"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243414\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243417,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243414\/revisions\/243417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}