Showing posts with label BRI. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BRI. Show all posts
Saturday, October 22, 2022
G20 to showcase China’s high-speed rail - Jakarta and Beijing plan to demonstrate their partnership in making transportation more efficient
First posted in Asia Times.
More than 1,300 journalists have already registered to cover the Group of Twenty summit to be held on November 15 and 16 in Bali.
The pre-summit buzz seems to be focusing on such questions as: Will US President Joe Biden attend? If he does, will he meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin? If they meet, will Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky be invited to sit in? If so, will there be any substantive outcome? So on and so forth.
The Western media missed mentioning an unprecedented event that will take place at the G20. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, widely known as Jokowi, will be taking his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for a ride on Indonesia’s first bullet train.
Taking Xi for a ride
The short ride around Bandung in West Java will be a test run at a more leisurely pace than the train’s designed speed of 350km/h. Full commercial operation after the shakedown of the high-speed railway (HSR) is expected to begin in June 2023.
By then, the travel time from Jakarta, the national capital, to Bandung, the capital of West Java, will shorten from more than three hours to 40 minutes. The 142.5-kilometer linkage is the first phase. The second phase at a distance of 520km will extend the HSR from Bandung to Surabaya and will begin later in 2023.
When completed, the HSR will in essence run the length of Java, the most populated island of Indonesia. Kereta Cepat Indonesia China will own and operate the HSR. KCIC is a joint venture, 60% owned by Indonesia and 40% by China.
In 2008, Japan first proposed the high-speed rail project connecting Jakarta to Surabaya. After a lot of back-and-forth wrestling over the required financial investment, Indonesia finally decided to take a serious look at the project in 2015. To Japan’s surprise, out of the blue, China submitted the winning bid.
Since the global financial crisis of 2008, China had been busy investing in infrastructure. By 2015, China had become the owner of the world’s largest network of high-speed railways.
China used its experience and, ahem, track record to qualify for the Indonesia bid. Widodo went to Japan and China to compare the two HSR systems for himself.
Not only has China’s system exceeded Japan’s Shinkansen in performance, but China’s proposal included technology transfer and willingness to assume of cost overruns. Japan would not commit to either.
China ready to build HSR anywhere
Taiwan-based commentator Lai Yueqian (赖岳谦) has explained why this G20 showcasing is a highly significant development. The test ride is Beijing’s way of announcing to the world that China is ready to market and build HSR anywhere in the world and Indonesia is China’s partner in this venture.
Lai has advanced degrees in international relations from France. He foresees that the KCIC-owned HSR could extend north from Jakarta to Singapore, through Malaysia and Thailand into China and link up with China’s own HSR to become part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to Central Asia and beyond.
G20 members account for 85% of the world’s gross domestic product, 75% of international trade and two-thirds of the world’s population. There is no more ideal venue than the leaders’ summit for the host country, Indonesia, and China to unveil their intentions to contribute to global trade by building transportation infrastructure around the world.
When China first began to consider building an HSR network to cover its vast territory, it approached Japan and France and proposed a 50/50 joint venture that would include their technical assistance. Those two countries had been up to then the only sources of HSR technology.
Both refused the deal that would include technology transfer and both assumed that China could not go it alone. Instead, China has since built HSR through mountains, deserts, over open waters, high altitudes and permafrost and proves that it can go anywhere.
The railcars are being supplied by China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC) in adherence to their specifications for the Fuxing railcars; Fuxing represents China’s highest level of HSR technology.
China to share HSR technology
These cars feature advanced smart technology, safety protocols, and strong environmental adaptability. Called electric multiple units (EMUs), the cars are equipped with 2,500 monitoring points for timely detection, early warning and diagnoses of all key systems.
As reported by Straits Times, “The Jakarta-Bandung high-speed railway will enrich the development of infrastructure facilities and generate fresh growth points in both the services sector and trade in services in Indonesia and Southeast Asia.”
The Biden administration and cohorts in Washington favoring confrontation with China are likely to be oblivious to the implications of China’s success in HSR.
Earlier this month, I suggested that sanctions on sales of semiconductor devices and equipment to China is rule-based disorder. Since then, Biden has doubled down and imposed virtually a total ban on semiconductor trade with China.
Speculations are rife in Taiwan that should China decide to invade the island in response to the American chokehold, the US military has contingency plans to hustle key technical and management staff of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) on to a plane and fly them out to Arizona. Mind you, this is based on American assumptions, not on any evidence of China’s actual intentions.
In effect, Biden’s chip ban will disrupt and damage a safe, secure and booming global semiconductor industry and turn it into tatters and pieces.
American producers from process equipment to design software systems to advanced devices will all suffer drastic reduction in revenue and potentially fatal loss of funds to develop the next generation of advances.
As with HSR, China will eventually succeed in circumventing America’s ban on semiconductor trade. Then Washington will experience a “see I told you so,” self-fulfilling confirmation that China poses a threat to America’s security.
In the meantime, Saudi Arabia has told Biden to “get lost” by cutting oil production instead of increasing output as he requested. Biden’s diplomatic response is to decide which cudgel to use on the Saudis. Talk about how to lose friends and piss off people.
The United Arab Emirates has also followed Saudi Arabia’s footsteps by becoming China’s second-largest (after Saudi) economic partner in the Middle East. China’s COSCO Shipping has chosen Khalifa Port in Abu Dhabi as the base of its Middle East operations.
Everybody in the world, except the Americans, seems to understand that bilateral trade builds and strengthens bilateral relations. Disrupt trade and those relations start to drift.
Missed opportunity
CRRC is the company, I reported more than three years ago, that set up assembly facilities outside of Chicago and Boston to replace outdated subway cars with new, state-of-the-art cars at a cost 20% lower than competitive bids and containing more than 60% made-in-America content.
The first delivery was met with rave reviews and praise as an outstanding case of win-win success. Thus encouraged, the Chinese company started to make plans to study the feasibility of replacing the subway cars in New York and Washington, DC.
That was when the wise old folks in Congress, such as the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, put a kibosh on the process. Senator Schumer raised the alarm that subway cars are perfect for Beijing to use for spying on the American commuters.
Thus, today New Yorkers continue to ride on the noisy, dilapidated, rocking and rolling, more than century-old subway cars, secure in knowing that no one is going to spy on them. By golly.
At this point, all Washington seems to know is to take cheap shots at China, denigrate beneficial projects around the world, and obstruct China’s progress wherever possible. The rest of the world is increasingly skeptical and unsure that following the US is in their best interest.
Wednesday, July 13, 2022
Disintegration of unipolar world begins
The only sensible course of action for the US is to collaborate with China and find mutually beneficial outcomes
First posted in Asia Times.
In April, I was invited to speak about the US-China bilateral relationship. For the title of the speech, I chose, “Pushing China’s head under water won’t make American great again.” Recent developments suggest that an updated title would be, “Pushing China’s head under water will hasten America’s own demise.”
There are two reasons for fine-tuning my title. First, the United States’ deliberate tactics to obstruct China’s growth and expansion have failed miserably while inflicting more hardship on Americans. The American people are paying a ghastly price for Washington’s obsession with China.
Second, priorities of America’s foreign policy are not making any sense. The most recent example is the announcement by President Joe Biden that the US will contribute $200 billion to the G7 pool of funds to compete with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
It’s hard to tell where Biden is going to find the money. Even if all Group of Seven nations contribute their share of funds, it’ll be even harder to figure out to how they can implement BRI-like projects in the developing world. Most probably they would have to subcontract work to China, which knows how to implement it.
On top of Biden’s dream of grandeur, he is sending billions’ worth of arms and weapons to Ukraine to prolong the conflict with Russia. Bipartisan approval is easy when it comes to making war.
By contrast, to relieve the inflationary pressure on the American domestic economy, Biden is proposing to forgive 18 cents per gallon (4.76 cents per liter) of federal tax on gasoline for the three summer months.
Wow. Billions to compete with China and Russia and an 18-cent discount for the American motorist. In California, a gallon of gasoline has gone over $6 ($1.59 a liter). Saving 18 cents per gallon from a fill-up will barely cover the cost of a cup of coffee.
In the US, prices of everything are going up; inflation looms. Nay, inflation at 8.8% is already the highest in 40 years. Soon the American motorist won’t even get a cup of coffee from his gas-tax saving.
Biden does not deny that Americans are facing inflation. He blames the inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine. He urges the American public to endure this “for as long as it takes” in order to defeat Putin – hardly encouraging words.
Of course, most American people are not aware that it has been the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization that baited Putin over the decades into the war with Ukraine. Washington has since congratulated itself for successfully mounting a proxy war – getting Ukrainians to fight the Russians.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even explained that the war meets the objective to wear down the strength of Russia – albeit at the expense of Ukrainian casualties and property.
Having successfully pushed Russia into invading Ukraine, NATO celebrated with a summit at the end of June where Sweden and Finland were formally inducted as new members.
At the same time as having pushed Russia into a closer relationship with China, the organization accused China of not condemning Russia and therefore not standing with NATO.
NATO is afraid of China
At this NATO summit, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea were invited as observers, as a signal that NATO’s expansion plans now include the North Pacific. Just to make sure nobody misses that intention, for the first time NATO identified China as a potential adversary and a “systematic challenge.”
So, what constitutes China’s threat to the security of NATO members? Apparently it is the fact that China has dominated manufacturing of goods at prices that the West cannot compete with. China’s GDP continues to grow, and that makes NATO members nervous.
The West led by the US has repeatedly accused China of violating “rule-based international order.” The most recent action by the Biden White House was to impose sanctions on goods made in Xinjiang, alleging human-rights abuses there.
In response, China, on the day after the conclusion of the NATO summit, announced the placement of an entire order for 292 commercial jetliners worth more than $37 billion with Airbus, the European consortium, and none to Boeing, the other major maker.
This was a harsh, attention-getting message from China in response to Biden’s endless innuendos and baseless insults and a signal that China is ready to play hardball. All of Beijing’s past diplomacy seems to be misinterpreted by Antony Blinken et al as being soft.
The Blinken team in the State Department seem to think they can cherry-pick issues to work with China on the one hand and otherwise castigate Beijing with a recitation of imagined violations of international rules. No more, says Beijing.
Boeing recently made a market projection that China’s future demand for passenger jetliners was 8,700 planes worth $1.5 trillion over the next 20 years. If the US is determined to decouple from China, Boeing faces a bleak future in China.
China offers EU partnership
China’s other message is to the countries in the European Union, many of which are members of NATO. The Airbus order reaffirmed that China can be a major economic partner and poses no threat to the security of the EU.
Inflation in the EU is rapidly getting out of control because of the war in Ukraine and the US-imposed sanctions on Russia. If Biden thought he was driving a stake into the heart of Russia’s economy, he miscalculated. Putin turned around and pegged Russia’s energy exports to the ruble. Consequently, the value of the ruble against the euro has reached a seven-year high.
The artificial shortage in world oil caused by the US sanctions on Russian oil has not hurt Russia. It makes money selling its oil to China, India and other buyers at higher prices. Concurrently, the US and UK as oil exporters are also making money because of the shortage they created.
However, major nations in the EU, especially France, Germany and Italy, are energy importers and they are beginning to question the wisdom of following the US leadership, which seems to work in favor of the US and UK at the expense of the EU.
Such doubts were accentuated when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently announced that his country needs aid to the tune of $5 billion per month to survive and keep operating. On top of refugees, shortages of staples, and inflationary pressures, the EU leaders have to worry as to whether Uncle Sam will pick up the tab or pass it on to the EU.
The world is beginning to see the difference between currencies based on assets and the American dollar based on the “full faith and credit” of the US government, in other words, the Federal Reserve’s printing press.
Central banks of various countries are beginning to lighten their dollar holdings in favor of other reserve currencies, the most popular being China’s renminbi. According to the International Monetary Fund, the US dollar’s share of total global currency reserves has fallen to its lowest point in more than two decades.
To take advantage of the availability of Russian oil at favorable discount, India entered a rupee-to-ruble deal and get around paying in dollars. For the first time, India also bought coal from Russia with the Chinese renminbi.
BRICS as another pole
While the G7 and then the NATO summit meetings took place in Europe, it was China’s turn to host the BRICS summit, which it did virtually. At the 2022 summit, Beijing invited many non-member countries as observers.
Formed in 2009, BRICS consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It is not a military alliance but is meant to promote collaboration for peace, security and global economic development. Compared with the G7, BRICS has three times the population but only about 70% of the G7’s GDP.
At the 2022 summit, Argentina and Iran formally applied to join BRICS. Adjusted for purchasing parity, the GDP for BRICS+ would surpass the G7. And there is a proposal afoot to create a new global reserve currency based on a basket of BRICS+ currencies as an alternative to the US dollar.
Rather than going around the world collecting military allies and imposing sanctions on countries that do not wish to align with the US, China invites partners to collaborate on mutually beneficial basis.
Since it was initiated in 2013, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has launched more than 13,000 projects in 165 countries valued at nearly a trillion dollars. Most of the BRI projects have to do with upgrading badly needed infrastructure, which leads directly to a boost in the recipient country’s economy.
There is now a high-speed rail linkage from China through Central Asia to Moscow and on to Rotterdam on the Atlantic coast. Twenty-five out of 31 Latin American countries are participants in the BRI, as is most of Africa.
At the just-concluded Group of Twenty summit, the divide between the US-led Western bloc and China, Russia and the non-aligned members of the G20 became quite clear. The summit concluded without the usual group photo of smiling state leaders and no joint declarations expressing optimistic steps for the future.
The Biden administration and the US Congress remain convinced that the way to suppress China from making economic progress is to deny it access to American technology and knowhow.
As all nations know well from their own development history, among them Japan and the US, borrowing and copying from more advanced nations can only be a beginning. Unless they can build from there and innovate and originate their own breakthroughs, they will always be me-too laggards.
Every year, China graduates eight times as many students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) than the US. These human resources power developments in high technology.
The more pressure the US exerts to stifle China’s advance, the more determined the Chinese will be to find their own technical advances and skirt around American roadblocks. In some fields, China has caught up with and even surpassed the US.
China is already the world leader in electric vehicles and the battery technology for the EVs, in fifth-generation and the future 6G in telecommunications and quantum computing, just to name a few examples.
China’s latest aircraft carrier has an electromagnetic catapult system on par with the one on USS Gerald R Ford, the newest US carrier. China has demonstrated a hypersonic missile while US manufacturers are still tinkering with theirs.
Despite the US-mounted trade war that “punished” Beijing with tariffs on imports, China has continued to expand exports and the trade surplus with the US has actually grown rather than lessened. The real impact was to raise the cost of living for the American public.
The US has wasted a lot of energy and resources trying to suppress China’s rise. It hasn’t worked, and it won’t work in the future. With four times the population, China’s GDP exceeding that of the US is inevitable. If on the other hand the US should succeed in provoking a conflict with China, the Americans will rue that day, and most likely so will the world.
Can US and China find common ground?
The only sensible course of action is to collaborate with China and find mutually beneficial outcomes. As Asia Times recently urged, “there is a wide field for potential cooperation that would benefit both countries and give the United States more room to back out of the stagflation trap in which it finds itself presently.”
On the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Blinken held a five-hour conversation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. The purpose was to pave the way for a future meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The tone from Blinken was that US would like to restart a friendlier and more positive bilateral dialogue. China’s reply was that this is easy to do. To begin, all the US has to do is to recant all the lies, disavow the nasty rhetoric and stop blackening China.
Whether Blinken and Biden will see the wisdom of non-confrontation and choose win-win outcomes in place of zero-sum results remains a question. Maybe we’ll know more after the two leaders meet.
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Decouple? Americans better learn what it means
China hawk Peter Navarro is leading Trump down a disastrous path, not just for the US but for its allies. First posted on Asia Times.
The tortuous slog for China and the US to reach phase one of the agreement that would end the trade war looks increasing problematic and may indeed go “poof” into the ether before Presidents Trump and Xi can agree on a place to meet and sign.
One day, Trump declares that we’re about to sign the best deal ever. The next, Trump threatens to raise the tariff to the next level.
China believes the phase one agreement would include an US commitment to subsequently remove all tariff on imports from China. Peter Navarro, who Bloomberg Businessweek called the most strident China hawk, is the White House hardliner who opposes rescinding any tariff on Chinese goods.
Navarro leads Trump astray
Navarro has persuaded Trump that imposing tariffs on Chinese imports would close the trade deficit. Instead, the US trade deficit with China has only worsened. Despite being wrong, Navarro’s credibility with Trump appears intact. His view prevailing within Trump’s China team may mean no deal at all.
Trade hawks like Ron Vara, aka Peter Navarro, insist that the US can win the trade war with China by piling on tariffs. Navarro habitually credits the fictional Ron Vara for the more ludicrous assertions and statements that he has concocted. Most likely he’s too ashamed to be identified with the more outlandish positions.
Navarro/Ron Vara learned from his mentor and good friend Gordon Chang (author of The Coming Collapse of China) that attacking China can be personally rewarding. As proof, despite Chang going off the rails predicting the collapse of China nearly two decades ago, he still gets invited to US network news and writes commentaries for the print media.
Navarro does Chang one better because he’s a better writer than the rambling “Collapse” Chang. Navarro’s book Death by China, though full of misrepresentations, nonetheless caught Trump’s fancy, and that’s how he became part of the White House team on China.
One of Navarro’s favorite assertions is that China’s unfair trade practices steal jobs from Americans, an accusation he has managed to imprint on to Trump’s brain.
However, his former colleagues at the University of California, Irvine have just published a factually based study supported by charts and tables in the Harvard Business Review that refutes his allegations about China. Specifically, the study showed that the US had not lost any jobs to China since China joined the World Trade Organization. Of course, as I reported earlier, the same colleagues also told me that Navarro came from not knowing anything about China.
The concluding sentence of the HBR article said, “But the data of the last 25 years portray US-China commerce as the most synergistic bilateral relationship in world history, bringing peace along with mutual prosperity.”
‘Be careful what you wish for’
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd spoke recently to the Asia Society in Palo Alto, California. He said, “Those seeking to unravel this relationship, be careful what you wish for in terms of known consequences and unintended consequences.” Rudd was referring to people like Steve Bannon and certain members, such as Navarro, of the Trump administration who are pushing for decoupling with China.
The consequence of a decoupled US could be as devastating as a nuclear winter, and the American public needs to know and fully understand what the US would look like once decoupled from China. It’s high time to examine the consequences carefully.
As the threat of a trade war loomed early last year, Chinese consumers begin to favor their own local products over competing American brands. The Apple smartphone, once the must-have item for every Chinese yuppie, has fallen behind at least four Chinese brands in market share in China.
Online sales on Singles Day (November 11) broke all records with 25% higher revenue than last year. Obviously, China’s consumer economy is not being hurt by US imports, made more expensive by added tariffs, because consumers are not buying US goods. Decoupling would mean American businesses being permanently kept away from a market at least four times as large as their own domestic market.
On the technology front, decoupling would bring collaboration to a halt and slow innovations and advances. Take Huawei’s 5G (fifth-generation telecom) development as an example. Decoupling would force Huawei to source many of its components from outside the US, but it’s double-edged. As much as 70% of Qualcomm’s revenue depends on supplying Huawei.
According to National Public Radio, 54 countries have already accepted Huawei’s 5G while only the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are banning Huawei. If the US and China are fully decoupled, the world will be split into those countries with 5G and a handful without. The gap would only widen, since countries with Huawei’s 5G will be in line to move up to 6G years ahead of others, as 6G is already under development at Huawei.
According to National Public Radio, 54 countries have already accepted Huawei’s 5G while only the US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are banning Huawei. If the US and China are fully decoupled, the world will be split into those countries with 5G and a handful without. The gap would only widen, since countries with Huawei’s 5G will be in line to move up to 6G years ahead of others, as 6G is already under development at Huawei.
How China and the US influence the rest of the world would be dramatically different.
The US military is stationed in more than 60 countries with around 1,000 bases. The basis of alliance with the US would rest primarily on this umbrella of armed security. Economic synergy, if any, would be minimal, or even negative for US allies as Trump strong-arms them to pay more of the cost hosting American troops in their homelands.
Instead of military alliances, China seeks economic collaboration with many countries around the world, especially as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. After it was launched in 2013, 65 countries involving 4.4 billion of world’s people have entered agreements and projects with China under the initiative.
In general, China offers to finance and assist in the building of infrastructure projects. These projects can be railways, highways, power plants, ports and the like. What these projects have in common is that their size and scope are more than the individual country can handle and the completion of the project would provide a significant boost to its economy.
The US, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in particular, goes around warning Third World countries of the potential debt trap that these BRI projects represent. The response from most of these countries is, “Do you think we’re too stupid not to recognize debt traps?”
Instead, they have seen how infrastructure investments in China have resulted in hundreds of millions of people being taken out of poverty, and they want some of that. Of course, it goes without saying that Chinese investors financing BRI projects must ensure that the terms of financing are sound and not give cause for BRI skeptics to say I told you so.
Uzbekistan a beneficiary of BRI
Uzbekistan is one of the more recent success stories. When the Uzbek strongman Islam Karimov died in 2016, his successor stepped in and opened the country to the outside world. Reforms eliminated corrupt practices and enacted laws to safeguard foreign direct investments.
China liked what it saw: a politically stable country, a large market of 32 million people, and a high-caliber workforce. Sixty percent of the population was under age 30. Within the last two years, more than 1,200 Chinese companies have entered Uzbekistan to create employment for young workers. At the same time, China became the largest contributor of foreign direct investment at US$15 billion.
China has installed fast rail from Tashkent to Xian to help Uzbek farmers sell fresh fruits to China, replacing fruits formerly imported from the US. Up to now, most of the Uzbek fruits have been exported to Russia, but now the farmers see a Chinese market potentially 10 times as big.
The rail link also sends cotton, Uzbekistan’s No 3 major export product, to the textile plants in China. To improve the quality of Uzbek agriculture, China sends agricultural machinery, seeds and technology.
The ancient Silk Road used to run through the length of Uzbekistan and its old cities are popular tourist destinations, and visitors from China are no exception. Becoming fluent in Mandarin in order to be a tour guide has become a popular course of study for young Uzbeks.
Recognizing the tourism potential of historic Samarkand, China has sent a team of architects and city planners to work with the Uzbeks. Funded by China’s Silk Road Fund, the team is working to redesign the ancient city for maximum tourist appeal, conservation and preservation of precious sites while facilitating economic growth.
Another reason Uzbekistan is important to Beijing is its critical geographical location between China and Russia. The BRI objective to link China to Russia and Western Europe by rail has to run through Uzbekistan.
The hostility of the Trump administration has pushed Russia and China to a high level of collaboration and cooperation. Chinese President Xi Jinping has had 30 meetings with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin over the past six years and made eight state visits to Russia this year alone.
Chinese-Russian strategic relations
The two leaders call theirs a strategic partnership, a special relationship. The partnership encompasses sharing of Russia’s advanced weaponry and anti-missile warning systems and China injecting foreign direct investments to help Russia revitalize its economy at an average rate of $5 billion a year.
As one example, Great Wall Motors invested more than $500 million for a state-of-the-art sport-utility-vehicle plant in Tula, south of Moscow, to supply its popular Haval to the Russian market. The factory provides employment for 1,000 workers.
Huawei is engaged in helping Russia develop its 5G telecommunication network with no concerns about back-door leaks but with the wide recognition that 5G will be a crucial boost to the Russian economy.
Russia is also encouraging China to help develop polar navigation in the Arctic. As an alternative direct shipping route from China to Western Europe, it is a Belt and Road initiative of keen interest to China. It is an interest shared by the Russians, but they lack the resources to go it alone.
Every university and institution of higher learning in Russia has a partner school inside China. Students exchange residences to learn what each country has to offer, while facilitating the sharing of research.
Russia offers its expertise in classical music and mathematics while the Chinese do so in technology. And they work on artificial-intelligence projects together.
Russian students find studying Chinese a popular pursuit, an asset in their portfolio for a future career path involving China. At present, salaries in China are two to three times as high as in Russia for comparable occupations.
Fork in the road
The two countries also have another foreign policy in common: They do not try to tell other countries how they should run their governments.
Carry decoupling to the extreme, and we will see two very different worlds. Uneasy lie the countries that depend on the American military for their sense of security. They never know when Uncle Sam will hand them a sudden uptick in the bill for services rendered as Trump is currently doing with South Korea. Nor can they tell when the US might want to renegotiate the terms of the military arrangement.
China would lead the world based on trust and a mutual sense of security derived from trade and shared economic interests. Given that China is already the leading trading partner for well over 100 countries, I would anticipate that at least three-quarters of the world would gladly join an integrated global economy led by China.
The American people are at a fork in the road. Their president has elected to base his China strategy on Navarro, whose false narrative puts his personal agenda above national interests. That path will surely lead the US into isolation and diminished prospects of economic well-being.
Or, do they listen to far wiser observers, former government officials and statesmen who do not counsel disengagement with China? Kevin Rudd and Joseph Nye are just two of many examples. Nye has a distinguished record of government service and was former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
In a recent interview, Nye said, “I think the important point is to realize that China does not present an existential threat to the US like Hitler did or like Stalin did. China is not trying to really destroy or change the American system.”
The first step to re-engaging China is for Trump to decouple from Navarro.
Sunday, October 6, 2019
George Galloway Talk Show from London
Billed as the Mother of all Talk Shows, see episode 16 for a two hour discussion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ikjhzTQcSA
A special panel dedicated on the HK protest
https://youtu.be/xg4wqJ15e-o
Informative Video Presentation on Belt Road Initiative
Look for a balanced presentation on China's Belt and Road Initiative by PBS on 9/27/19
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_kw3mNazY&feature=youtu.be
PBS also explained how China produced billionaires faster than anyone on 9/29/19 free of polemics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqS7vo9xHE4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl_kw3mNazY&feature=youtu.be
PBS also explained how China produced billionaires faster than anyone on 9/29/19 free of polemics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqS7vo9xHE4
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