Wednesday, June 5, 2019
Monday, June 3, 2019
The US and China on a collision course
Andre Damon
3 June 2019
In a series of provocative
actions, the United States is making clear it is prepared to fight a war to
block Beijing’s rise as an economic and geostrategic competitor.
The “cold war” between the
United States and China took a major step toward becoming a “hot” war over the
weekend at the annual Shangri-La defense summit in Singapore.
The Financial Times, not
known for hyperbole, wrote that “The growing dispute between the US and China on
trade and technology is increasing the risk of military conflict or outright
war.”
At the summit, representatives
of the Pacific nations that would be caught in the crossfire of such a conflict
warned of the imminent possibility of a new Pacific war.
“Our greatest fear, therefore,
is the possibility of sleepwalking into another international conflict like
World War One,” said Philippines Defense Minister Delfin Lorenzana. “With the
untethering of our networks of economic interdependence comes growing risk of
confrontation that could lead to war.”
US officials used the summit
to continue their efforts to encircle China militarily and strangle it
economically, with acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan declaring China
to be “the greatest long-term threat to the vital interests of states across
this region.”
Just days earlier, Vice
President Mike Pence, addressing the graduating class at West Point, predicted
war in the Pacific, in Europe and in the Americas within the graduates’
lifetimes.
“It is a virtual certainty
that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life …
Some of you will join the fight on the Korean Peninsula and in the Indo-Pacific,
where North Korea continues to threaten the peace, and an increasingly
militarized China challenges our presence in the region. Some of you will join
the fight in Europe, where an aggressive Russia seeks to redraw international
boundaries by force. And some of you may even be called upon to serve in this
hemisphere.
“And when that day comes, I
know you will move to the sound of the guns and do your duty, and you will
fight, and you will win.”
The United States’ actions are
extraordinarily reckless and provocative. Seeing a challenge to its dominance,
it is seeking to use every tool at its disposal, including military force, to
compel China’s submission to its will. The United States is simultaneously
escalating conflicts around the world—including its regime change operation in
Venezuela and its dispatch of additional troops to the Middle East to “counter”
Iran—to shore up its flagging global hegemony through military means.
Chinese Defense Secretary Wei
Fenghe responded to the US threats with militarist bluster of his own, saying,
“Should anybody risk crossing the bottom line, the [People’s Liberation Army]
will resolutely take action and defeat all enemies.” He warned the United
States against encouraging Taiwanese separatism, declaring, “If anyone dares to
split Taiwan from China, the Chinese military has no choice but to fight at all
costs.”
The divisions between the
United States and China are centered on the Chinese state initiative called
“Made in China 2025.” The plan envisions a substantial expansion of Chinese
industry into high-value-added and high-technology manufacturing, areas
traditionally dominated by the United States and its allies.
In recent decades, Chinese
companies have made substantial developments in the high-technology sector,
including robotics, mobile phones and IT infrastructure. This development was
expressed most directly in the growth of Huawei, the Chinese mobile phone and
telecommunications firm, which was on track to become the world’s leading
smartphone maker by the end of the year.
Last month, the United States
moved to effectively destroy Huawei as a global competitor to Apple and Samsung
by banning US companies from selling it software and components. Google locked
the company out of the Android operating system and associated services, while
Broadcom and Qualcomm announced they would no longer sell the company chips it
needs to continue production.
The move enjoys broad
bipartisan support beyond the Trump White House. There is an emerging consensus
within the American ruling class that China must be prevented from becoming a
global technological, and thus military, peer of the United States.
The growth of US-China
tensions has overshadowed the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square
massacre. At the summit, Wei defended the bloody crackdown against the 1989
protests by workers and students, declaring the protests were “political
turmoil that the central government needed to quell, which was the correct
policy.”
He continued, “Due to this,
China has enjoyed stability, and if you visit China you can understand that
part of history.”
But three decades of
“stability”—the effective transformation of China into a gigantic sweatshop for
American and world capitalism—has come at a tremendous cost. China is not an
imperialist country. It remains dependent on foreign corporate investment and
finance. Now, it is once again in the crosshairs of a nuclear-armed United
States determined to go to any lengths to secure its global hegemony.
In the immediate aftermath of
the Tiananmen Square massacre, the International Committee of the Fourth
International wrote, “The repression in China is being carried out in the
direct interests of the imperialists. In attacking the Chinese workers, the
bureaucracy is acting as their agent, seeking to restore ‘labor discipline’ and
to repress the mass opposition of the working class to the policies of
capitalist restoration and the rampant exploitation and social inequality which
it has engendered.”
While publicly condemning the
massacre, the first Bush administration secretly made clear to the Chinese
government that the event was an “internal affair” and affirmed the value of
the Sino-American relationship “to the vital interests of both countries.”
The ICFI Statement continued,
“Imperialism gloats over the broken bodies of the Chinese workers, seeking to
exploit them for the purpose of crude anticommunist propaganda, while at the
same time calculating that the brutal state repression will translate into
higher rates of exploitation and even greater profits from the tens of billions
of dollars’ worth of direct investment and joint ventures already operating on
Chinese soil.”
This is precisely what
happened. Following Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of 1992, in which he
encouraged Chinese entrepreneurs to “get rich,” US investment in China
ballooned, leading to a profit bonanza for American corporations, along with
the fantastic enrichment of the upper echelons of the Chinese Communist Party,
through the exploitation of the Chinese working class.
The arguments by leading Chinese
figures that an accommodation and partnership with US imperialism would offer a
peaceful road toward China’s national development have proven to be a pipe
dream.
If Chinese officials accept US
demands, it will be a massive blow to the Chinese economy, causing mass
unemployment and engendering protests and political turmoil. But to stand up to
the United States means, sooner or later, to fight a war between nuclear
powers, in which millions dead on both sides would be an optimistic scenario.
Thirty years after the
Tiananmen Square massacre, all the arguments that the laws of imperialism
identified by Lenin after the outbreak of World War I had been superseded by
globalization and technological development have proven false. The capitalist
system, riven by a new scramble for a re-division of the world, is hurtling
toward a new world war.
The only thing standing
between humanity and this catastrophe is the international working class. It is
urgently necessary for the workers of China, the United States and the whole
world to unify their struggles in a common fight against the capitalist system,
which is the root cause of imperialist war. This means building sections of the
International Committee of the Fourth International in China and all over the
world as the vanguard of a working-class movement against imperialist war.
Andre Damon
Global recession coming? Manufacturing DOWN across Asia
Global recession fears grow as
factory activity shrinks
5 MIN READ
LONDON/HONG KONG (Reuters) -
Factory activity contracted across Asia and Europe last month as an escalating
trade war between Washington and Beijing raised fears of a global economic
downturn and heaped pressure on policymakers to roll out more stimulus.
Such growth indicators are
likely to deteriorate further in coming months as higher trade tariffs take
their toll on global commerce and further dent business and consumer sentiment,
leading to job losses and delays in investment decisions.
Some economists predict a
world recession and a renewed race to the bottom on interest rates if trade
tensions fail to ease at a Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan at the end of
June, when presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping could meet.
The U.S.-China trade war,
slumping automotive demand, Brexit and wider geopolitical uncertainty took their
toll on manufacturing activity in the euro zone last month. It contracted for a
fourth month in May - and at a faster pace.
“The additional shock from the
escalated trade tensions is not going to be good for global trade. In terms of
the monetary policy response, almost everywhere the race is going to be to the
downside,” said Aidan Yao, senior emerging markets economist at AXA Investment
Managers.
IHS Markit’s May final
manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index for the euro zone was 47.7, below
April’s level and only just above a six-year low in March.
In Britain, the Brexit
stockpiling boom of early 2019 gave way last month to the steepest downturn in
British manufacturing in almost three years as new orders dried up, boding ill
for economic growth in the second quarter.
After an official gauge on
Friday showed contraction in China, Asia’s economic heartbeat, the Caixin/IHS
Markit Manufacturing PMI showed modest expansion, offering investors some
near-term relief.
The outlook, however, remained
grim as output growth slipped, factory prices stalled and businesses were the
least optimistic on production since the survey series began in April 2012.
Central banks in Australia and
India are expected to cut rates this week, with others around the world are
seen following suit in coming weeks and months.
While U.S. manufacturing is
expected to grow steadily, economists expect the global malaise to eventually
feed back into the U.S. economy. Fed funds rate futures are now almost fully
pricing in a rate cut by September, with about 50 percent chance of a move by
end-July.
J.P. Morgan now expects the
Federal Reserve to cut rates twice this year, a major change from its previous
forecast that rates would stay on hold until the end of 2020.
Meanwhile, Monday’s survey adds
to evidence that the euro zone economy is under pressure and will likely be of
concern to policymakers at the European Central Bank, who have already raised
the prospect of further support.
There is little likelihood of
them hiking interest rates before 2021, according to economists in a Reuters
poll last week. They said the bank’s next policy move would be to tweak its
forward guidance toward more accommodation.
RECESSION FEARS
The trade conflict between
China and the United States escalated last month when Trump raised tariffs on
some Chinese imports to 25% from 10% and threatened levies on all Chinese
goods.
If that were to happen, and
China were to retaliate, “we could end up in a (global) recession in three
quarters”, said Chetan Ahya, global head of economics at Morgan Stanley.
Washington’s new tariff
threats against Mexico last week also contributed to global recession fears,
with stock markets tumbling around the world. The 10-year U.S. Treasuries yield
fell to 2.121%, a nadir last seen in September 2017.
Tensions flared again between
the United States and China at the weekend over trade, technology and security.
China’s Defence Minister Wei
Fenghe warned the United States not to meddle in security disputes over Taiwan
and the South China Sea, while acting U.S. Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan
said Washington would no longer “tiptoe” around Chinese behavior in Asia.
“We take this seriously. It
means that the trade war has not only become a technology war but also a
broad-based business war. There will be more retaliation actions from
China, especially for the technology sector,” said Iris Pang, Greater
China economist at ING.
Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore
and Gareth Jones
Missiles spotted over China during navy drill
People in many provinces saw
flying projectiles that could be ICBMs fired from PLA submarines
By ASIA TIMES STAFF
Projectiles were seen in many provinces on Saturday and Sunday morning. Photos: WeChat, Weibo
Glowing projectiles were
spotted lighting up the night sky on the first two nights of June in multiple
provinces in eastern and central China. These comet-like objects flew in curved
trajectories on the horizon and left residents wondering what they were.
Numerous photos posted online
suggest the unidentified flying objects were first seen in the wee hours
of Saturday in provinces such as Shandong, Liaoning and Hebei, at a time when
large portions of the Bohai Sea, plus the Bohai Strait between Shandong and Liaoning,
were cordoned off by the People’s Liberation Army for a massive naval
drill.
Netizens soon suggested
the UFOs streaking across the sky were missiles and projectiles fired by
the PLA in the Bohai Sea, the innermost gulf of the Yellow Sea.
Chinese papers reported that
the PLA conducted two military exercises in the Bohai Sea on Saturday and
Sunday, in waters between Shandong and Liaoning.
More sightings of similar UFOs
were reported on Sunday morning, from stargazers living further inland in the
central, landlocked provinces of Shanxi and Henan. This could be an indication
that missiles launched by the PLA traversed no less than 1,000 kilometers,
likely powerful ballistic missiles fired from a submarine.
A photo taken by a resident in
Shandong Province shows a projectile flying past clouds. Photo: Weibo
Some analysts suspect that the
missiles concerned could be the JL-3, a third-generation intercontinental
ballistic missile powered by solid fuel and launched from a submarine in its
final stage of development. It would likely be deployed on a modern Chinese
submarine known as the Type 096.
The JL-3 is rumored to have a range
of up to 12,000 kilometers, meaning that cities on the west coast of the
US like San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle were well within its range if
fired from China’s littoral waters in the East China Sea. The JL-3 is a
variant of the land-based DF-41 missile, the buttress of the PLA’s nuclear
deterrence, and can carry multiple warheads.
The drill was held when
China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe was in Singapore for this year’s Shangri-La
Dialogue, along with his US counterpart, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick
Shanahan. Wei reportedly warned that the PLA would go to any lengths to defend
China’s sovereignty and territory.
In a combative address, Wei
reasserted Beijing’s position in the South China Sea and vowed a “fight at all
costs” to recapture Taiwan should peaceful attempts to reunify the self-ruled
island fail.
The PLA is also expected to marshal
subs and warships south into the South China Sea for another exercise scheduled
this week.
China issues official warning to students hoping to go to US
Education ministry urges
Chinese citizens to undertake risk assessment before they try to get visas for
America
China is largest source of
international students in US, accounting for around 31 per cent of total
China issued an official
warning on Monday for Chinese students seeking to study in the United States,
amid heightened tensions between the two countries.
The Ministry of Education
urged students and academics to “raise their risk assessment” after an increase
in visa delays and denials for those who have applied to study in the US.
“For a period of time now,
some Chinese students in the US have faced situations where their visas were
restricted, the visa review period was extended, the period of validity was
shortened, or [their applications] were rejected,” it said in a statement,
relayed by the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
“The ministry wants to remind
[Chinese] students and scholars to raise their risk assessment, strengthen
their preventative awareness, and make the appropriate preparations.”
The warning comes as China and
the US have been locked in an intensifying trade war, with Beijing placing the
blame for the deteriorating relationship on Washington over the weekend.
Beyond raising tariffs on
billions of dollars’ worth of goods, the US has blacklisted Chinese telecoms
giant Huawei over national security concerns, with China saying it would launch
an “unreliable entity” list in apparent retaliation.
Meanwhile Chinese students in
fields such as robotics, aviation, engineering, and hi-tech manufacturing – all
key elements of the “Made in China 2025” policy – have faced additional
scrutiny when applying for visas to enter the US.
In June last year a US State
Department official told a Senate hearing that Chinese students in “sensitive
fields” could face additional screening.
Xu Yongji, deputy head of the
international department at China’s Ministry of Education, said on Monday that
13.5 per cent of government-sponsored Chinese students, 182 in total, had been
denied visas to the US in the first quarter of the year.
This reflected a significant
increase from the roughly 3 per cent of students, out of a total of 10,313
applicants, who were unable to study in the US last year, according to the
China Scholarship Council, which funds overseas students.
Xu also said that American
claims that Chinese students were carrying out “non-traditional espionage
activities” abroad and the cancellation of 10-year visas for some academics had
“hurt the dignity of Chinese students in the US”.
He said this had created a
chill in educational exchanges between the two countries that should be
“quickly remedied”.
Meanwhile, Geng Shuang a
spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, told a regular briefing that the US had
imposed “unnecessary restrictions” on people-to-people exchanges, including
students hoping to study abroad, which has sparked “opposition from the
education industries in both countries”.
China is the largest source of
international students in the US, accounting for around 31 per cent of the
total, according to the latest available figures from the US Department of
Homeland Security.
In March, there were 369,364
students from China in the United States.
While the US continues to be
the preferred destination for Chinese students, its appeal has waned slightly
in recent years.
A survey by China’s largest
private education provider, New Oriental Education & Technology Group,
found that 43 per cent of respondents ranked the US as their top choice in
2019, down from 49 per cent two years previously, followed by Britain,
Australia and Canada.
Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of
the state-run nationalist tabloid Global Times, tweeted earlier on Monday
that the Chinese government’s warning was a response to the “recent series of
discriminatory measures the US took against Chinese students and can also be
seen as a response to the US-initiated trade war”.
Han Yi, from Beijing-based
consultancy JLL Overseas Education, said he had seen cases where Chinese
students in the US had experienced extended delays in processing their visas
and seen the period of visa validity shortened.
But despite these difficulties
and the ministry’s warning, he did not expect the number of Chinese students
visiting America to decrease significantly.
“A small decrease is
possible,” Han, who graduated from a master’s programme at Ohio State
University, said.
“Historically this is not the
first time this type of thing has happened, so the impact may be limited. We
hope things will improve.”
Liu Weidong, a researcher at
the American studies institute at the China Academy of Social Sciences, said
the current US administration was seeking to decouple from China and targeting
students and academics was one way of achieving this.
“They believe Chinese students
studying in the US are taking advantage of the Americans, or even thieving or
spying,” he said. “But they forget the great contribution of Chinese students
in the past and in the future. Eventually they will face opposition from within
the US.”
Liu, who said some of his
colleagues at the academy had seen their US visas cancelled or been questioned
by the FBI, said that in the short term the restrictions could have some impact
on China’s research and development.
But he continued that this
will force China to “improve its own R&D, reduce its dependence on the US,
and look at increasing cooperation and exchanges with other developed countries”.
“I would suggest that instead
of any retaliatory actions, the Chinese side should be more open and inclusive
to welcome more international and American visitors to win the support of the
rest of the world,” he added.
The US embassy in Beijing did
not immediately comment on the Chinese government’s official warning.
Additional reporting by Jun
Mai and Liu Zhen
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)