The Trump administration and China
A lot seems to be going on between this administration and China:
On Thursday, Pence delivered one of the most hawkish speeches by a senior U.S. official since the two countries restored ties four decades ago.
Pence assailed China as a military aggressor, a prolific thief of U.S. technology and, controversially, as interfering in American elections.
Yet in a sign that the United States still sees a need for China, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit on Monday after his latest negotiations in North Korea, the nuclear-armed regime which counts on Beijing as its diplomatic and economic lifeline.
Pompeo, speaking to the traveling press on his way to Asia, said China was “determined to support our efforts” on North Korea despite the high tensions…
Pence’s speech “doesn’t completely preclude cooperation on narrow areas like North Korea, but it’s much more clear in the U.S. assessment of Chinese intentions and China’s goal of really replacing the U.S. and pushing back U.S. power,” [Jamie Fly, a former official in the George W. Bush administration who heads the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States] said.
Remember back in 2012 when Obama laughed at Romney when the latter said that Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat? At this point there may be a consensus that it’s China:
Few policymakers with ties to the rival Democratic Party raised broad objections when the Trump White House in December released a National Security Strategy that cast China as a competitor.
The bargain set forth by former President Bill Clinton when he welcomed China into the global trading order — that greater prosperity would bring reforms — has fallen flat, with President Xi Jinping increasingly clamping down on domestic dissent and religious freedoms tightly controlled.
U.S. business leaders, who long advocated warm ties with China as they coveted the world’s largest consumer market, have cooled markedly toward Beijing amid complaints of widespread industrial espionage, which Beijing denies.
Here’s another article on the subject, which calls it a possible Cold War II, but I can’t get behind the paywall.
From Neo’s link to the WSJ piece by Walter Russel Mead, re: VP Pence’s speech at the Hudson Institute.
The last snippet refers to the aforementioned trade clauses, plus more Navy patrols in the S. China sea, competing with China on developmental aid in Africa and Asia, and analyses of the military dangers of foreign based supply chains.
Yeah, “all of them together barely registered” because we were all mesmerized by the Kavanaugh circus.
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A retired econ prof. Peter Morici stated on cable news this morning that he believed that China would dig its heels in on trade tariffs for at least a couple more years. That would be a tough pill.
This is long overdue. We thought that once China joined the WTO, they would change, and it would produce increased economic activity in the US as the potential China market would open.
Instead millions of lost manufacturing jobs, huge trade deficits, forced technology transfers, and currency manipulation without the reciprocal benefit to our workforce and economy.
Bush gave lip service to Chinese abuses and Obama ignored the problem. Finally a businessman is President who recognizes that it’s better to confront the problem late, than not at all.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/china-trump-trade-united-states/567526/
By most measures, Russia is essentially a Third World country, a major player in world affairs mainly by virtue of their large military.
China, on the other hand, is a much more formidable opponent, which is working to bring into being a comprehensive, systematic, multi-decade plan to overtake the U.S. that aims to increase their reach and power by building up their military, gaining control of key sea lanes, creating new alliances, siting military bases in other countries, building/buying ports, roads and railroads, airports, and other facilities in some 40 countries around the world.
The Chinese are the “main enemy.”
One should also add to the above the decade’s long, quite robust, ongoing Chinese program to steal our intellectual property and military technology.
Let’s not forget, as well, their major influence/propaganda operation here in the U.S., Chinese “Confucius Academies”–according to reports, operating in dozens of colleges and universities here in the U.S.–which I confess I had never even heard of until a couple of months ago.
Plus, there is the enormous number of Chinese students studying here in the U.S.–now about 350,000+–and the many other Chinese in academic and industrial positions here in the U.S. who often act as information gatherers, and spies for the Chinese government.
P.S. As I understand it, the Chinese approach to intelligence gathering is the “grain of sand” approach i.e. while we in the West might send in a couple of key people to gather high value, critical intelligence, the Chinese tend to get a piece of sometimes seemingly irrelevant information from each of thousands of individual sources, which they then assemble into a picture that will reveal what they need to know.
My take on China . . .
In the middle of the 19th century, Japan reacted to the West similarly. They realized the superiority of Western technology and set out to get it by sending Japanese to the West to learn it. Within 30-40 years they had brought themselves to – in many ways – parity with the West. And they did all that without the aid of globalization that has lifted China out of her material backwardness – a feat more impressive than China’s last 30-40 years, IMO.
Japan saw how easily the West was carving up Asia, and China in particular. Thus Japan’s build up in the Meiji period. All institutions were overhauled. The goal was to be at least the equal of the West.
Through it all, like China today, the Japanese never lost sight of the superiority of their civilization. They only thought the West ‘clever’ and not, except for technology, a civilization to be imported any more than necessary. They both looked up to the West (for technology) and also looked down on the West, as do the Chinese today. Lest you think I am just biased, I’m married to a Beijing lady, and I’ve been to China many times since the 1990’s. This doesn’t guarantee an expert on China, but I’ve come to see what I call the ‘New York Times’ understanding of China (where one in depth article seems to qualify one as knowledgeable about China) versus a deeper, historical understanding of Chinese history and where they are today.
Japan was so far ahead of the rest of Asia by 1900, they took on, in their minds, the big brother role there. They most certainly did not like the West in their neighborhood and took steps to combat it. It was an affront to their pride that these clever, but uncivilized, barbarians were strong enough to dictate policy in their back yard, and maybe even to them.
The Japan were on a collision course with the West up until WWII. There was no backing down, despite knowledge that the West possessed greater economic and – eventually – military might. Backing down was simply not in the national character. The samurai spirit was alive and well (ie., the national character hadn’t changed, just technological prowess).
China at the end of the Cultural Revolution (mid 70’s) was a waste land in every sense of the term. Deng Xiaoping, one of the smarter and more practical of the Chinese revolutionaries, understood that China needed to learn from the West, and so sent waves of visiting scholars to the West. I live in an agricultural area with a university, and knew many of the fist wave of scholars in the early 80’s. They came to start the modernization of agriculture in China. Through them I came to know my wife.
The Chinese have a very schizophrenic view of the West (the USA), identical to the Japanese view of a century ago (and probably even today) – they admire Western technology, doing everything they can to get it, but most assuredly think Western Culture is deficient. After all, how can their 5000 year old civilization not be great!
They are hyper proud, and after their last 150 years where the West had the run of China, even a whiff of paternalism from the West is not tolerated. Those 150 years was just an unfortunate interlude to them, and China is now returning to its rightful place in the order of things in Asia, and maybe even the world.
I’ve read extensively on both Chinese and Japanese history and have talked at length with Chinese over the years, and the parallels with Japan of the Meiji period are glaring to me. I’m not saying identical, but similar enough to scare me. IMHO, a confrontation is brewing.
And the West seems to have its own arrogance in these kind of matters. We assume exposure to our ways and material wealth will be enough to bring these ‘backwards’ people to our way of life with our values. That simply doesn’t happen. They like to have, actually, must have, our technology to hold their head up high, but then offer no thanks for our kindnesses. Both Japan and now China learn the technology and then kind of sneer at the West.
Human pride and status, are always at the center of these things, and always will be.