UNITED NATIONS: TRUMP ATTACKS CHINA
By Pepe Escobar, Asia Times.
September 27, 2020 | EDUCATE!
Above photo: Donald Trump and Xi Jinping address the United Nations General
Assembly.
Sinophobia, Lies And Hybrid War.
Contrary to US rhetoric and disinformation China is not an existential
threat to the 'free world'.
It took one minute for President Trump to introduce a virus at the virtual
75th UN General Assembly, blasting "the nation which unleashed this plague
onto the world." And then it all went downhill.
Even as Trump was essentially delivering a campaign speech and could not
care less about the multilateral UN, at least the picture was clear enough
for all the socially distant "international community" to see.
Here is President Xi's full statement. And here is President Putin's full
statement. And here's the geopolitical chessboard, once again: it's the
"indispensable nation" versus the Russia-China strategic partnership.
As he stressed the importance of the UN, Xi could not have made it more
explicit that no nation has the right to control the destiny of others:
"Even less should one be allowed to do whatever it likes and be the hegemon,
bully or boss of the world ."
The US ruling class obviously won't take this act of defiance lying down.
The full spectrum of Hybrid War techniques will continue to be relentlessly
turbo-charged against China, coupled with rampant Sinophobia, even as it
dawns on many Dr. Strangelove quarters that the only way to really "deter"
China would be Hot War.
Alas, the Pentagon is overstretched - Syria, Iran, Venezuela, South China
Sea. And every analyst knows about China's cyber warfare capabilities,
integrated aerial defense systems, and carrier-killer Dongfeng missiles.
For perspective, it's always very instructive to compare military
expenditure. Last year, China spent $261 billion while the US spent $732
billion (38% of the global total).
Rhetoric, at least for the moment, prevails. The key talking point,
incessantly hammered, is always about China as an existential threat to the
"free world", even as the myriad declinations of what was once Obama's
"pivot to Asia" not so subtly accrue the manufacture of consent for a future
war.
This report by the Qiao Collective neatly identifies the process: "We call
it Sinophobia, Inc. - an information industrial complex where Western state
funding, billion dollar weapons manufacturers, and right-wing think tanks
coalesce and operate in sync to flood the media with messages that China is
public enemy number one. Armed with state funding and weapons industry
sponsors, this handful of influential think tanks are setting the terms of
the New Cold War on China. The same media ecosystem that greased the wheels
of perpetual war towards disastrous intervention in the Middle East is now
busy manufacturing consent for conflict with China."
That "US Military Edge"
The demonization of China, infused with blatant racism and rabid
anti-communism, is displayed across a full, multicolored palette: Hong Kong,
Xinjiang ("concentration camps), Tibet ("forced labor"), Taiwan, "China
virus"; the Belt and Road's "debt trap".
The trade war runs in parallel - glaring evidence of how "socialism with
Chinese characteristics" is beating Western capitalism at its own high-tech
game. Thus the sanctioning of over 150 companies that manufacture chips for
Huawei and ZTE, or the attempt to ruin TikTok's business in the US ("But you
can't rob it and turn it into a US baby", as Global Times editor-in-chief Hu
Xijin tweeted).
Still, SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation), China's
top chip company, which recently profited from a $7.5 billion IPO in
Shanghai, sooner or later may jump ahead of US chip manufacturers.
On the military front, "maximum pressure" on China's eastern rim proceeds
unabated - from the revival of the Quad to a scramble to boost the
Indo-Pacific strategy.
Think Tankland is essential in coordinating the whole process, via for
instance the Center for Strategic & International Studies, with "corporation
and trade association donors" featuring usual suspects such as Raytheon,
Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman.
So here we have what Ray McGovern brilliantly describes as MICIMATT - the
Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank
complex - as the comptrollers of Sinophobia Inc.
Assuming there would be a Dem victory in November, nothing will change. The
next Pentagon head will probably be Michele Flournoy, former Undersecretary
of Defense for Policy (2009-2012) and co-founder of the Center for a New
American Security, which is big on both the "China challenge" and the "North
Korean threat". Flournoy is all about boosting the "U.S. military's edge" in
Asia.
So What Is China Doing?
China's top foreign policy principle is to advance a "community of shared
future for mankind". That is written in the constitution, and implies that
Cold War 2.0 is an imposition from foreign actors.
China's top three priorities post-Covid-19 are to finally eradicate poverty;
solidify the vast domestic market; and be back in full force to
trade/investment across the Global South.
China's "existential threat" is also symbolized by the drive to implement a
non-Western trade and investment system, including everything from the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund to trade
bypassing the US dollar.
A Harvard Kennedy School report at least tried to understand how Chinese
"authoritarian resilience" appeals domestically. The report found out that
the CCP actually benefitted from increased popular support from 2003 to
2016, reaching an astonishing 93%, essentially due to social welfare
programs and the battle against corruption.
By contrast, when we have a MICCIMAT investing in Perpetual War - or "Long
War" (Pentagon terminology since 2001) - instead of health, education and
infrastructure upgrading, what's left is a classic wag the dog. Sinophobia
is perfect to blame the abysmal response to Covid-19, the extinction of
small businesses and the looming New Great Depression on the Chinese
"existential threat".
The whole process has nothing to do with "moral defeat" and complaining that
"we risk losing the competition and endangering the world".
The world is not "endangered" because at least vast swathes of the Global
South are fully aware that the much-ballyhooed "rules-based international
order" is nothing but a quite appealing euphemism for Pax Americana - or
Exceptionalism. What was designed by Washington for post-WWII, the Cold War
and the "unilateral moment" does not apply anymore.
Bye, Bye Mackinder
As President Putin has made it very clear over and over again, the US is no
longer "agreement capable" . As for the "rules-based international order",
at best is a euphemism for privately controlled financial capitalism on a
global scale.
The Russia-China strategic partnership has made it very clear, over and over
again, that against NATO and Quad expansion their project hinges on
Eurasia-wide trade, development and diplomatic integration.
Unlike the case from the 16th century to the last decades of the 20th
century, now the initiative is not coming from the West, but from East Asia
(that's the beauty of "initiative" incorporated to the BRI acronym).
Enter continental corridors and axes of development traversing Southeast
Asia, Central Asia, the Indian Ocean, Southwest Asia and Russia all the way
to Europe, coupled with a Maritime Silk Road across the South Asian rimland.
For the very first time in its millenary history, China is able to match
ultra-dynamic political and economic expansion both overland and across the
seas. This reaches way beyond the short era of the Zheng He maritime
expeditions during the Ming dynasty in the early 15th century.
No wonder the West, and especially the Hegemon, simply cannot comprehend the
geopolitical enormity of it all. And that's why we have so much Sinophobia,
so many Hybrid War techniques deployed to snuff out the "threat".
Eurasia, in the recent past, was either a Western colony, or a Soviet
domain. Now, it stands on the verge of finally getting rid of Mackinder,
Mahan and Spykman scenarios, as the heartland and the rimland progressively
and inexorably integrate, on their own terms, all the way to the middle of
the 21st century.
