{"id":254444,"date":"2024-02-12T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-02-12T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=254444"},"modified":"2024-02-11T05:48:18","modified_gmt":"2024-02-11T05:48:18","slug":"china-builds-as-the-usa-bombs-this-study-proves-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2024\/02\/china-builds-as-the-usa-bombs-this-study-proves-it\/","title":{"rendered":"China Builds as the USA Bombs: This Study Proves It"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Washington\u2019s telling, Beijing is spreading authoritarianism through producing goods and building infrastructure around the world while the US is promoting freedom and democracy by bombing and selling weapons.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Feb 2024 <\/em>– People nowadays say literally when they really mean metaphorically. I don\u2019t know why; maybe a linguist can explain. But when I wrote literally in the headline, I meant literally.<\/p>\n

Below is the first paragraph summing up a new study<\/span><\/a> from the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a pan-European independent research group.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US is the world\u2019s sole military superpower. It spends more on its military than the ten next highest spending countries combined,\u201d wrote Richard Baldwin, the study\u2019s main author and a professor of international economics at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina is now the world\u2019s sole manufacturing superpower. Its production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined.\u201d<\/p>\n

His first factual statement about the United States is probably quite well-known. But he thinks the second one is not. \u201cDuring ongoing work on global supply chain disruptions with my co-authors \u2026 I\u2019ve noticed a stark fact that I don\u2019t think is as widely known as it should be. China is now the world\u2019s sole manufacturing superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Actually I did read something like that from a review by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, in Foreign Affairs magazine about a new book on how the US has weaponised the global economic and financial systems for its own foreign policy.<\/p>\n

\u201cChina\u2019s role as the workshop of the world \u2026 might be as hard to replace as the global role of the US dollar,\u201d Krugman wrote.<\/p>\n

So I gather China\u2019s manufacturing prowess is starting to get noticed. Why? It\u2019s most likely because as the US tries to isolate China economically and disrupt its worldwide supply chains, especially in hi-tech fields, it is causing enormous grief to suppliers, manufacturers and middlemen everywhere, not least in the US, as they find their Chinese partners are really tough to replace.<\/p>\n

How much of a manufacturing superpower? Well, China produces more than the US, Japan, Germany, India, South Korea, Italy, France and the island of Taiwan combined.<\/p>\n

Its share as a percentage of global gross production already equalled that of the next top 10 producers by 2020.<\/p>\n

US production is three times more reliant on Chinese inputs than vice versa while Chinese manufacturers rely less and less on US supply.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I can go on and on with the stats but you get the idea. Baldwin\u2019s article provides several nifty, easy-to-understand graphics so you can check them out for yourself.<\/p>\n

However, there is a single manufacturing sector over which the US exercises complete global dominance; you guessed it, weapons.<\/p>\n

Worldwide military spending in 2022 hit US$2.2 trillion, the highest since the end of the Cold War, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. And the US defence industry accounts for a staggering 45 per cent of all such sales around the world.<\/p>\n

With two hot wars in Ukraine and Palestine, and US spending on the military approaching US$1 trillion per year, the Big Five \u2013 Lockheed Martin, RTX Corporation, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics \u2013 are salivating over the profit prospects of the coming years.<\/p>\n

If you really want to understand how the arms industry works, listen to their conference calls with financial analysts. It\u2019s cold-blooded capitalism at its purest.<\/p>\n

Consider this earnings call<\/span><\/a> in October. An analyst from TD Cowen, part of TD Asset Management, which held about US$16 million in General Dynamics stocks, asked: \u201cHamas has created additional demand, we have this US$106 billion request from the [US] president. Can you give us some general colour in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Aiken, General Dynamics\u2019 chief financial officer, replied: \u201cI think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a similar earnings call with RTX<\/span><\/a> in the same month, there was a question from a top analyst at Morgan Stanley, which owned a whopping US$3 billion worth of RTX, formerly Raytheon, stocks: \u201cLooking at [the White House\u2019s US$106 billion funding request], you\u2019ve got equipment for Ukraine, air and missile defence for Israel, and replenishment of stockpiles for both. And this seems to fit quite nicely with the Raytheon defence portfolio.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo how much of this opportunity is addressable to the company and if the dollars are appropriated, when would be the earliest you could see this convert to revenue?\u201d<\/p>\n

Greg Hayes, RTX\u2019s chairman and executive director, replied: \u201cI think across the entire Raytheon portfolio you\u2019re going to see a benefit of this restocking on top of what we think will be an increase in the DoD [Department of Defence] top-line as we continue to replenish these stocks.\u201d He estimated that supplying Ukraine alone would be worth billions in revenues over the coming few years with profit margins of up to 12 per cent.<\/p>\n

A late November headline from The Washington Post said it all: \u201cUkraine aid\u2019s best-kept secret: Most of the money stays in the U.S.A.\u201d You don\u2019t say!<\/p>\n

According to a report by the Washington-headquartered Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft<\/span><\/a>, of the 46 active conflicts around the world, the US provided arms to one or more parties for 34 of them. That was almost three out of four conflicts!<\/p>\n

Comedian Mel Brooks had this classic number called Springtime for Hitler<\/em>. Well, it\u2019s springtime for America\u2019s merchants of death; except they are not called that any more, but rather patriots doing their duty.<\/p>\n

More wars and armed conflicts also mean looser regulations, less restrictive but longer contracts, price gouging, faster approval of foreign sales and the construction of new weapons plants \u2013 all for doing business with the US government.<\/p>\n

Of course, we are not saying that the US doesn\u2019t build and provide aid in countries around the world, or that China isn\u2019t a significant player in the global arms market. But that picture is a lot less significant to both countries and their political economy, as well as to wars and conflicts around the world, than the profiles we have been addressing here.<\/p>\n

Now, if we pair all that with the anti-China narrative from Washington, you would have to conclude that Beijing is spreading authoritarianism through producing goods and building infrastructure while America is promoting freedom and democracy by bombing and selling weapons around the world.<\/p>\n

Remember what George Orwell wrote? \u201cWar is peace. Ignorance is strength.\u201d Reality is easily turned upside down.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Alex Lo has been a <\/em>Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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

1 Feb 2024 – On Washington\u2019s telling, Beijing is spreading authoritarianism through producing goods and building infrastructures as the US promotes freedom and democracy by bombing and selling weapons. Remember George Orwell? \u201cWar is peace. Ignorance is strength.\u201d Reality is easily turned upside down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":254448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[1161,1104,239,244,725,112,644,70,1594],"class_list":["post-254444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-arms-industry","tag-arms-trade","tag-brics","tag-china","tag-culture-of-violence","tag-pentagon","tag-silk-roads","tag-usa","tag-war-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254444","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=254444"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254452,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254444\/revisions\/254452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}