Rules of ‘international order’ as defined by Blinken - The answer is obvious: International order is whatever Uncle Sam wants it to be

First posted on Asia Times. What a difference a few months can make in the rocky relations between the US and China. At the meeting in March in Anchorage, Alaska, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a blistering lecture in front of the Western media to the Chinese delegation that Beijing needs to behave in a way consistent with the rules of international order. China’s most senior diplomat at this summit was Yang Jiechi. He basically responded by telling Blinken to mind his manners and, not incidentally, asked what he was talking about. Since that meeting, Blinken has gone around the world recruiting allies to oppose China on the basis that it does not follow the rules of international order. Some Western countries grudgingly yielded to the pressure and signed on with Blinken, but they were befuddled by what he means by “international order.” After all, it has been China that works within the confines of the United Nations while the US has often acted unilaterally. Apparently, for China to expand its economy and threaten to overtake the US is in violation of “international order.” For China to install fifth-generation (5G) telecommunication technology around the world while the US has to import 4G technology is not acceptable behavior in accordance with “international order.” For China to take more than 800 million of its citizens out of poverty and “brainwash” more than 90% of the Chinese people into approving and accepting one-party rule is not consistent with “international order.” Instead, keeping its poor people poor, as the US does, is consistent. China’s Belt and Road Initiative helping countries in Latin America and Africa finance and build their infrastructure is clearly outside the strictures of “international order.” The Taliban are inviting China to Afghanistan to help build its infrastructure and revitalize the economy. China has expressed interest in bringing Afghanistan into its BRI and, incidentally, thumb its nose at the “international order.” Installing missile batteries onshore in China and offshore in the South China Sea to threaten US naval flotillas exercising their freedom of navigation off the coast of China is clearly outside the “international order.” America’s Western allies may well be confused by all this, and wondering: “What is international order?” The answer is obvious: International order is whatever Uncle Sam wants it to be. Ever since the end of World War II, the unwritten rule has been for Uncle Sam to say to the world: “Don’t do what I do but do what I tell you.” Australia obeys Australia has been one of the most faithful followers of America’s version of international order. No sooner than Scott Morrison was elected prime minister in August 2018, he became Donald Trump’s lead attack dog against China. Morrison attacks China on unfair trade practices, on human-rights abuse, and on South China Sea tensions, and he even initiated the charge to reopen the investigation on the origin of the virus that causes Covid-19. China had been Australia’s leading trading partner, accounting for more than one-third of Australia’s exports. Not surprisingly, a displeased China has stopped buying from Down Under. Morrison promptly cried foul. Apparently, China is supposed to absorb the nasty rhetoric, act like nothing has changed and keep doing business as usual. At the recent Group of Seven summit, Morrison went around seeking reassurance from the allies for their support for confronting China. The US gave him an “attaboy” but is happy to sell coal, wheat and lobsters to China in place of Australia. France did likewise and is happy to supply China’s red-wine market. Unlike Morrison, the premier of Western Australia has questioned the current situation with China. Mark McGowan asked last October, “How is it in our interests to be reckless with trading relationships that fund and drive our prosperity and our nation forward?” Can we talk? US President Joe Biden may also be having second thoughts. He has quietly let it be known that he would be interested in a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Blinken has been trying to get Foreign Minister Wang Yi to return his phone calls to discuss such a summit and for permission by lower-ranking officials to visit Beijing to plan for it. If the White House expected Beijing to shout hooray and act grateful for the prospects of making nice, it must be disappointed. The official response from Beijing has been that there is no rush to meet, especially if the Americans are only interested in more opportunities to harangue. If Washington is interested in renewing friendship, then sure we can talk, says Beijing. This week, the South China Morning Post reported that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman will meet with her counterpart, Vice-Foreign Minister Xie Feng, in Tianjin. They are supposed to explore a possible meeting between Blinken and Wang Yi, presumably behind closed doors without the presence of media. Sherman has been quoted as saying that the bilateral relationship is about mutual respect. She seems to presage a less confrontational meeting than the one led by her boss in Anchorage. If and when the two parties were to reach rapprochement, it would leave Australia embarrassingly lonesome. If one of the smartest former American presidents were to visit Australia again, he surely would remind Morrison, “It’s the economy, stupid.”

Biden’s China obsession could be the undoing of America - Collaboration with China has been good for the US and its people in the past, and should be again

First posted in Asia Times. Abbreviated version in Putonghua can be found on YouTube and here. A translated version was posted in the Sing Tao Daily. It’s hard to tell if US President Joe Biden’s position on China is his true conviction or he’s just going along with the heavy anti-China sentiment in Washington, but his China team has made it official now: no more engagement with China, just competition from here on. The nature of competition the Biden team has in mind, mind you, is not your gentlemanly sort of sporting contest where my one-upping you will incentivize your one-upping me, and we both in the end are better for competing. No, all indications point to all-out, below-the-belt, eye-gouging, anything-goes tactics to attack the other party, namely China. Two ongoing developments point to this conclusion. Winding its way through the US Congress is the so-called Strategic Competition Act of 2021. It has not been enacted as yet, so we don’t quite know all the provisions. My understanding is that as much as $300 million has been allocated to blacken China’s image around the world. In this era of fake news, assassination of one’s character (or a country’s reputation) via innuendo, exaggeration and even outright lies is easy to do. August members of the US mainstream media, such as The New York Times or The Washington Post, are not above purveying or contributing misinformation, sometimes with malice of aforethought and sometimes simply being too lazy to authenticate questionable sources. Consistent with all this is Biden’s recent call to reopen an investigation into whether the virus that causes Covid-19 could have originated in a research lab in Wuhan, China. The task force was given 90 days to report its findings. Biden to revisit origin of Covid A definitive investigation leading to conclusive understanding of the origin of Covid-19 is a good thing, important to protecting the future health of the world. Provided, of course, that the work is above-board, science-based and conducted by a scientifically qualified team of people of impeccable honesty and integrity. A team of investigators that includes the likes of a Peter Navarro or Mike Pompeo would not pass the smell test. Furthermore, to be completely comprehensive, some of the other speculations besides the Wuhan lab theory deserve to be included in the investigation. For instance, the biological laboratories at Fort Detrick in Maryland were shut down by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for violations of safe practices more than six months before the outbreak in Wuhan. Around that time there were unexplained deaths caused by respiratory failures. A full account was never made public, but the issue was swept under the carpet by blaming the fatalities on excessive vaping, that is, inhalation of fruit-flavored smoke. There were also reports in cyberspace that there was evidence of the coronavirus being found in European sewage systems, again months before the Wuhan outbreak. What happened to all those rumors? If the Biden task force is not just for the purpose of pinning the blame on China, but to perform a thorough and credible investigation, 90 days may not be enough. Secretary of State Tony Blinken’s approach to competing with China is to recruit and reorganize former allies to band together against China. These former allies were offended and turned off by former president Donald Trump and his go-it-alone approach. But what does Blinken have to offer to entice the allies to join the fray? A recent tally indicates that 165 countries now consider China their No 1 trading partner, as compared with 13 countries that regard the US as their No 1 trading partner. More than 100 countries are participants of China’s Belt and Road Initiative in more than 2,600 projects with a total value of US$3.7 trillion. As his only counter, Blinken goes around the world warning the countries to beware of debt traps. Obviously, the US does not have the ability to compete with China when it comes to doing business via trade or provide assistance in erecting infrastructure. Countries are asked to choose sides with no clear idea of the benefits of aligning with the US. The only alternative is to slander China and turn world opinion against Beijing. The US as ‘model of democracy’ Thus Blinken has to trot out the usual tropes, that China is not democratic, has no human rights etc, ad nauseam. All of the prospective allies are urged to be freedom-loving democracies like America. So how does the US stack up as a “model” democracy? Let’s count the ways. The losing candidate of the last presidential election, Donald Trump, still claims to have won. Members of his political party, the Republicans, have gone to great lengths to shield him from going to jail, even for violating the statutes of the US constitution. As part of the debacle, the Republican Party at the state level is busy devising ways to deny certain citizens the right to vote. In its view, democracy is not for everybody in America and winning by hook or crook is everything. Mass shootings in America have become a nearly daily occurrence. In America, the right to carry an assault weapon is an human right more important than a human life. The US with just 4.4% of the world’s population has 22% of world’s prison population, far and away the most of any country. China with about 4.5 times the US population has fewer people incarcerated, and yet we Americans accuse China of abusing human rights. Furthermore, the US prisons house a disproportionate share of black and brown people. Young children torn away from their refugee parents at the southern border, and still unaccounted for, is yet another blot on our human-rights record. Because of concerted efforts by the central and local governments, China has lifted all of its people out of poverty. In America, conditions in the ghettos have not changed much and they are still mostly populated by black and brown people. One out of eight Americans lives below the poverty line. Government officials in China are given rotating assignments and graded on their performance. They get promoted if they show they are capable of taking on increasing responsibility. In the US, the most important requirement for those aspiring to public office is to be able to raise a lot of money, or be already wealthy. By any objective measure, would any potential allies find the US a worthy model of democracy to follow? Blinken has a tough sell ahead of him. The Biden administration is also planning to compete with China by investing in and subsidizing the development of new technologies. The Endless Frontier Act, surprisingly enough, has bipartisan support for dedicating $120 billion to focus on artificial intelligence, superconductors and robotics. Biden bets $52 billion on semiconductors Supposedly, Biden will throw $52 billion at the American semiconductor industry to build new manufacturing facilities in the US, known as fabs. I am doubtful that this will work. The US used to be the world’s leading maker of semiconductor chips. But as the design of the chips became more complex, the cost of the fabs increased geometrically, and soon Silicon Valley companies gave up manufacturing and just concentrated on designing proprietary chips, relying largely on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation to make them. Today, Intel is the only US company that still owns fabs, and it has publicly admitted that they are two to three generations behind TSMC’s. Morris Chang, founding chairman of TSMC, has openly questioned whether US companies would still have engineers with the experience and skills needed to run a state-of-the-art fab. China also does not own state-of-the-art fabs because the US will not allow the sale of advanced manufacturing equipment to China. Therefore, regardless of whether the $52 billion will be well spent, China will not catch up for some time. But if Beijing needs skilled engineers to run an advanced fab, it can always recruit from Taiwan to supplement its own staff. Many are already working in China. To attain the most advanced fab, China will need to buy lithographic machines from ASML, based in Netherlands. Already, Peter Wennink, chief executive of ASML, is fretting that the US export control measures will prevent his company from selling the most advanced machines to China, each with a $1 billion+ price tag. The loss of the China market would mean the loss of more than one-third of ASML’s revenue, and therefore funds for further research and development, necessary in order to maintain the company’s technological lead. Wennink is worried that the export restriction will force China to develop its own technology and soon not only ASML will lose a major customer but will face a new competitor. You’d have to wonder how long the European company will go along with the Washington ban on exports to China. Another aspect of disengaging China is to discourage the enrollment of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates from that country in US universities. US Senator Tom Cotton, for one, thinks Chinese students are here just to steal American knowhow. But without the infusion of the best and brightest international students – and students from China make up more than one-third of them – elite schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) would wither and shrivel if they had only America’s own graduates, trained by a faltering K-12 system, to draw from. One anecdotal story will illustrate my point. At a recent international math competition among high-school students, the US team beat the team from China for first place. But the “upset” win can be attributed to the fact that every member of the US team was ethnic Chinese, students whose parents had immigrated to the US from China. The quality of China’s universities is improving; many are already among the world’s top 50 schools. China’s elite schools may not yet on par with their US counterparts but Beijing believes in investing in human capital. If its graduate students can’t come to the US, they can go elsewhere, or simply stay home and learn from the best professors recruited from around the world. The loser in the long run would be the US. Engagement has been good for America All along, we Americans have been acting like the 40+ years of engagement has been a one-way boon for China at our expense. That’s hardly the case. Collaboration enabled Apple to “design in California and assemble in China,” a strategy so successful that the company is now worth more than $2 trillion. Had Apple designed and assembled in the US, the high costs would have limited its sales and stunted the profitability and growth of the company. With much fanfare, Trump announced that Foxconn, which had been the principal assembler of Apple products, would build a big plant in Wisconsin. He chalked that win up to his “persuasive” personality. Yet the plant has not materialized because the labor rates of China are just too far apart from those of the US. Even Trump can’t wring water out of a rock. And that was at the high end. On the low end of the economy, low-cost imports filled the shelves of Walmart and American consumers continued to enjoy their standard of living and not face rising prices. As much as 60% of China’s trade surplus with the US was due to goods made by American companies in China. Because China’s economy grew at a remarkable rate, doubling every eight to 10 years, American companies that initially went there to source their products began to expand their investments in order to participate in the Asian country’s growing middle class as the size of China’s market became comparable to their home market. America’s leading technology companies soon saw the wisdom of designing in China for the world. They set up R&D centers to take advantage of the technical talents in China, which produces eight times the number of STEM university graduates as the US. Sadly, our leaders in Washington only know that might makes right and we have the strongest military in the world. They are banking on the premise that we can outcompete with China on the basis that we can wreak more death and destruction. Otherwise, disengaging and competing with China will be at best a mutually diminishing outcome. It won’t help Washington solve our deteriorating infrastructure, failing school system, deaths by random shootings, and widening gap in income between the super-rich and the have-nots. We need leaders with the vision and political courage to see and tell the American people what’s good for America and that competing with China is not the way. In fact, as we continue on the Biden trajectory, we could be on a downward spiral that spells the end of the American empire.

One man’s view of an ‘Upside-Down World’- Review of book by Clyde Prestowitz

First posted in Asia Times. Clyde Prestowitz’ The World Turned Upside Down is the first major book on US-China relations to be published in 2021. The book, as stated by the subtitle, is about “America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership.” For the author’s response to this review, click here. Prestowitz’ first book was Trading Places, published in 1988, about how America ceded its future to Japan and how to reclaim it. He has written quite a few books since then, but in a sense, his latest book is Trading Places redux, except that China has taken the place of Japan. More than 30 years ago, Japan was “stealing” manufacturing jobs from America. The author proposed certain strategies for the US government to negotiate with Japan and thus rectify the trade imbalance and bring manufacturing back. Japan was a much-feared juggernaut back then. The venture capital community in Silicon Valley was so intimidated by Godzilla, they always asked, “Can Japan steal our ideas and make the widget better and cheaper?” The venture capitalists basically stopped investing in electronic hardware ideas and emphasized the software side of technology. This mindset led to the emergence of fabless giants such as Nvidia, a company that has no manufacturing capability but is worth much more than Intel, which has billions invested in semiconductor manufacturing. Before Washington could adopt some of Prestowitz’ ideas and move against Japan, Japan’s bubble economy popped. One could probably predict that this was inevitable when the Tokyo Palace grounds became more valuable than the total real estate of the entire US state of California. But manufacturing did not come back to America. Japan hung on for as long as possible, gradually losing production to South Korea and some to Taiwan and eventually to China. Prestowitz blamed China’s entry to the World Trade Organization, after which it gamed the system and took unfair advantage of favorable terms to build its manufacturing base. Before presenting my disagreements Prestowitz’ new book, I need to acknowledge that this is a valuable work, comprehensively researched, written with clarity, and full of teachable content. Reliance on mercantilism In the book, Prestowitz accuses China of rampant theft of intellectual property as an essential component of its economic rise. But he is fair-minded in that he outlines how every developing economy, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, “borrowed” ideas, design and technology from others to boost economic development. Most interesting, at least to me, is how the United States under the leadership of Alexander Hamilton relied on systematic theft of technology from Europe, and the practice of mercantilism to protect the infant industries at home until the domestic manufacturers could compete with its foreign competitors. Thanks in a large part to these mercantile policies, the US was to experience unprecedented economic growth. The book notes, “Between 1820 and 1870, the US GDP growth was, like China’s today, the wonder of the world.” I have not read anywhere else as thorough explanation of what mercantilism is and how such practice can benefit the practitioner. Heretofore, I thought of “mercantilism” as a swear word to sling at another country if we don’t like its trade policy. But Prestowitz makes a convincing case that mercantilist policies are important to nurture infant domestic industries. However, I have trouble with the two basic assumptions the author used to make his case against China. First of all, Prestowitz appears to echo the zero-sum view of US-China relations popular among the denizens inside the Washington Beltway. Regardless whether American politics is from the right or left, they all assume that China is out to push the US aside and take over as the global hegemon. US can’t stand being overtaken by China The prospect that China’s economy will overtake the US seems to drive these Americans to distraction. To them, size really does matter and China’s growing economy causes a deep-seated sense of insecurity and an inferiority complex. While they stew in paranoia of their own making, they find no comfort in the fact that per capita income in China will take decades to catch up, if ever. Depending on who’s counting, we Americans have around 800 to 1,000 military bases encircling the globe and we get upset and alarmed because China may have two. China’s first in Djibouti on the Horn of Africa was established to support the PLA Navy in its anti-piracy patrols. I don’t even know where the second is supposed to be, but how dare China challenge us with two international harbors? Then in recent years, China has had the temerity to militarize atolls in the South China Sea. How are we supposed to exercise the freedom of navigation in that body of “international” water and not feel threatened by the menacing missile batteries? Our naval vessels sail with the best of peaceful intentions, but the Chinese guns pointing at the ships clearly do not. Overlooked in such recriminations is that China simply does not play by the same rules as the US. China has never acted on or expressed the desire to become the world’s No 1 military power. Its most powerful diplomatic tool is the Belt and Road Initiative to help other countries build their infrastructure. To his credit, the author does not smear China by calling the BRI a debt trap or another form of colonial exploitation. While many in the mainstream media do step over the line and without any basis accuse China of gross misconduct, at least Prestowitz refrains from doing so. Rather, he thinks it was clever of China to come up with the idea. “It broke no international rules, attacked no one, and alienated no one while attracting bevies of supporters and partners. At a stroke it made China into a major world power whose influence in some ways surpassed that of the US.” In fact, China’s frequently repeated mantra is “win-win.” The best example of its practicing of what it preaches can be seen in a documentary from Singapore on Uzbekistan as the “buckle” of the BRI. BRI offers growth prospects The excitement in Uzbekistan is palpable as China build high-speed rail to connect the double-landlocked country to the sea and to the rest of the world. Uzbek officials now talk about the prospects of an economic boom that could replicate what happened to Japan and China. China offers access to its huge market and its inbound investments create massive employment opportunities. The Chinese in Uzbekistan and the Uzbeks are open and cordial with each other. Both sides win and there is no recrimination or talk of mercantilism. The second reason that Prestowitz considers China a bad actor is that the country is run by a one-party system, and what’s worse, a Communist Party at that. This is true. China calls it a socialist party with Chinese characteristics. Apparently, the author does not like that label, preferring to call it a Leninist party. I am not sure what that means, but I am certain it’s not good. Prestowitz accuses the Communist Party of China of oppressing the people, denying them personal freedom and certainly freedom of speech. Ever since China “conned” its way into the WTO, it has made tremendous economic advances. But from the author’s point of view, all the benefits went to the CPC and very few to the people of China. When the folks in Washington call out “communist” China, it says it all. This epithet justifies all the bad things we can ascribe to that country – even when China has systematically lifted millions out of poverty every year until can now claim that no one is left behind. The author lists Hong Kong, Tibet and Uighurs in Xinjiang as evidence of human-rights abuses in China. My disagreement is too complicated – and enormous – to go into except to say that he is unduly influenced by a small handful of vocal dissidents given a huge megaphone by the mainstream media and actively supported behind the scenes by the National Endowment for Democracy. (I gave one example of deliberate distortion by the mainstream media in a recent Asia Times article.) The book is critical of China for the lack of freedom of speech, an accusation that is more off than on the mark. The Internet-savvy generations in China exercise plenty of free speech criticizing policies they do not like and posting videos of misbehavior by corrupt officials. Government officials monitor the Internet carefully because that’s a critical source of public opinion that they have to listen to. ‘Inferiority’ of China’s one-party system It’s true that China does not let free speech run wild like in the US. Not a day goes by here without some politicians spouting nonsense. The media have lost their integrity in order to survive financially and can’t help the public distinguish the real from the fake news. It’s also not clear that China’s one-party system of government is inferior to our two-party system. Party members in China on track to become officials are graded and measured every step along the way, from the local to city to provincial to national level. They have to prove themselves capable of discharging their duties before they can move up. What do we Americans use as meritocracy to select our leaders? Would-be politicians need to be rich or have access to wealthy donors. Money trumps – excuse the expression – competence, rhetoric and public persona outrank one’s track record, experience or accomplishments. Each political party is more interested in suppressing the other than getting anything done for the public good. In the case of the US competing with Japan, Prestowitz’ proposal was for a proactive federal government to take counter measures and negotiate limits for Japanese economic expansion into the US. To counter China’s rise, he proposes that the US lead the formation of a “democratic globalization organization.” Conceptually, the idea of a DGO is to replace the WTO, rewrite the rules and gang up on China. This is perhaps appealing to functionaries in Washington but is neither realistic nor practical. Thanks to the success of the BRI, many of the countries that would need to align with the US have already developed deep economic ties with China and would not want to be part of such alliances. Tom Friedman of The New York Times wrote after attending the Beijing Olympics in 2008, “When you see how much modern infrastructure has been built in China since 2001, under the banner of the Olympics, and you see how much infrastructure has been postponed in America since 2001, under the banner of the war on terrorism, it’s clear that the next seven years need to be devoted to nation-building in America.” By the title of the book, Prestowitz implies that having the US on top is the natural order while being surpassed by China is not. It has been more than a decade since Friedman made his observation and we in the US have only gone backward on rebuilding our infrastructure. Isn’t it high time we started dealing with our internal challenges rather than thinking of ways to keep China down in order to stay “up”?

Will the U.S. learn from history to avoid catastrophe?

This post first appeared in Asia Times. On a recent visit to the Pearl Harbor Memorial in Honolulu, I was struck by a statement on the museum wall. It read: “Conflict is brewing in Asia. The old world order is changing. Two new powers, the United States and Japan, are rising to take leading roles on the world stage. Both seek to further their own national interests. Both hope to avoid war. Both have embarked on courses of action that will collide at Pearl Harbor.” The wall was referring to the collision that culminated in the surprise attack by waves of Japanese warplanes on December 7, 1941. The statement caught my attention because by exchanging “China” for “Japan,” it could easily apply to the bilateral tension that’s simmering today between the US and China. Sadly, we Americans seem to be heading for another collision, having learned nothing from history. After World War II, the Chinese fought the Americans to a draw in Korea despite owning vastly inferior weapons and firepower compared with those available to our troops and other UN forces. Next, we made up a bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident to justify charging into Vietnam. Despite wanton use of napalm, Agent Orange, cluster bombs and other innovations to deadly effect, we lost the war and had to get out in disgrace. Then for one brief brilliant moment in recent history, our Cold War adversary, the former Soviet Union, imploded. For the first time, we won a war without having to fire a shot. We became the only shining kingdom on top of the hill. We began to hope that a peace dividend would make possible the realization of the American dream. But that flicker of optimism was quashed by a group in the Washington establishment who called themselves neoconservatives. They began to agitate and promote the idea that the opportunity was nigh for the US to become the sole surviving superpower and seize the mantle to rule the world. To show pointed disdain, I proposed calling the proponents of these ideas neoconservative nincompoops, abbreviated as “neoconpoops.” I was disappointed that the handle did not gain popularity. To add insult to injury, these diehard neoconpoops moved from the fringe to the center of power when George W Bush was elected president of the United States. 9/11 became a sad legacy Then came September 11, 2001. With the help of his neoconpoop advisers, W promptly launched a Global War on Terror (GWOT). We invaded Afghanistan because Osama bin Laden was supposed to be hiding there. We did not find him in Afghanistan, but our troops are still there more than two decades later. We got at twofer by invading Iraq at about the same time. The pretext was to accuse Saddam Hussein of owning weapons of mass destruction. We did not find any WMD but we “shocked and awed” the Iraqis, found Saddam and lynched him. And, by the way, our troops are still in Iraq. With our heavy presence in the Middle East, we assumed that we could influence many admiring countries in the region to emulate what we called democracy. The Arab Spring that ensued seemed to justify our expectation that authoritarian leaders would be toppled. But except for possibly Tunisia, the movement did not succeed other than causing death and destruction. With the help of our military, the Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi was defeated and torn to pieces by a street mob. For sure Gaddafi was not a supporter of democracy, but his rule provided education, health care and housing for the Libyan people and raised per capita income to more than US$11,000. What has happened to Libya since Gaddafi? Just a constant state of civil war and misery for civilians. Safe to say that democratic reform and free elections are far from the minds of the people hoping just to survive another day. Somehow, we got away cheap on this one. We got rid of the bad guy and lost just one ambassador and three other American casualties, and then we got out. We didn’t get our hands on Libyan oil but we didn’t leave any boots on the ground, either. We also got smarter at fighting proxy wars and not putting our soldiers at risk. Under president Barack Obama, we started to use killer drones to rub out presumed al-Qaeda bad guys. Civilians who got killed were simply treated as collateral damage without so much as an expression of regret – such as, sorry you got in the way. President Donald Trump elevated the use of drones to another level by assassinating Qasem Soleimani, an Iranian war hero and second only to Iran’s Supreme Leader in prominence. He was killed at Baghdad airport along with other Iraqis and some Iranian nationals. The mission was carried out remotely and did not put any American at risk. We haven’t even mentioned the disturbances in Syria, Yemen, Egypt and other countries in that part of the world. Suffice to say that wherever we go, we have been very good at creating instability and causing mayhem. Our intentions were always lofty, to promote democracy, but the consequences invariably took a toll on innocent lives – and worldwide refugee crises. It’s true that a decade after 9/11 we finally found bin Laden hiding in Pakistan and killed him. However, he had the satisfaction of seeing our over-the-top response and self-inflicted cost of lives and property exceed his wildest expectations. This has been a long but I feel necessary review of recent history to bring into context the current status of international relations with China under President Joe Biden’s administration. Trend set by Anchorage summit The first summit meeting of the Biden administration’s top diplomats with those of China held in Anchorage, Alaska, last month was a strong indicator that nothing has changed in the way we Americans think about China. It’s almost as if our secretary of state, Tony Blinken, retrieved some notes from the trashcan discarded by outgoing secretary Mike Pompeo and carried on from there. Our Mr Blinken dispensed with the customary diplomatic niceties and proceeded straight to accusing China of human-rights offenses in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan, cyberattacks and economic coercion among other offenses. Yang Jiechi, China’s leading foreign-policy official and a member of the Politburo, replied in kind. Yang said the US was not in a position to criticize China. America has a history of genocide from the eradication of native Americans to the persecution and lynching of black Americans. When he mentioned the Black Lives Matter movement, we were reminded of the white police officer slowly squeezing the life out of George Floyd with his knee on Floyd’s neck. We have to admit that Yang had a valid point. Since China began its economic reform, it has been working steadily on poverty alleviation regardless of the ethnicity of the people being helped. The only government “bias” was to assist the most accessible first and the more remote ones later when roads and the Internet were put in place. Today, China proudly claims that it has no one living below the poverty line. Many developing countries envy China’s success and are seeking to emulate its model of helping their rural poor and raising their standard of living. So far as I know, we haven’t alleviated poverty for anyone in the US. The top 1% have improved their lot and grown wealthier, but the bottom 50% have suffered reduced circumstances. Since most people in the ghettos are people of color, America’s economic divide has made them a lot worse off. More than 90% of the people in China approve of their government, support its policies and express optimism for their future. The surveys backing this are done by reputable third parties, such as Pew Research, and are not paid for or coerced by an authoritarian government. In the US, any time the sitting federal government gets 50% popular approval it is considered to be doing well. Our model of democracy says the right to carry a gun, to wear a mask in public places or to receive vaccinations against Covid-19 are important political issues and not matters of public health. Further, the most urgent issue at hand right now is how legally to deny certain Americans the right to vote. Biden’s China team seems oblivious to the fact that much has changed between the US and China since the financial crisis of 2008 caused by fraudulent financing of mortgage swaps by Wall Street. China’s disenchantment began in 2008 China’s disappointment in the US and loss of confidence in Wall Street have meant a loss of faith in the American dollar. In lieu of quantitative easing American-style, China invested heavily in its infrastructure, resulting in superhighways and the world’s largest network of high-speed rail. China then applied its experience and expertise in building infrastructure to a world-girding Belt and Road Initiative. At last count, China has started 2,800 projects in about 100 countries helping them build and improve their infrastructure. Given the total estimated investment value of $3.7 trillion, the participating nations could not hope to see new roads, railways, ports or airports without China’s help in financing and project-management expertise. The best we in the US can do in response is to warn these countries to beware that China is promoting debt traps. Along with economic cooperation on infrastructure projects, China has also promoted open global trade. Before Biden was sworn in to the White House, China concluded the biggest free-trade agreement with the ASEAN+5 (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) bloc, and a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with the European Union. As I said in my January Asia Times commentary, “The community of nations has moved on while, thanks to Trump, the US has been left at the station. It’s unrealistic to expect that the US under the new Biden administration can simply pick up from where the US was before the Trump debacle.” Unfortunately, the Biden administration seems to think that all we need to do is to rally our old allies to counter China’s rise. To justify our continuing attacks on China, it’s not beneath our officials, abetted by our mainstream media, to resort to lies and fabrications – another Gulf of Tonkin in the making. The most popular topic recently is to accuse China of committing genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang, despite the fact that the population of Uighurs in China has been increasing and not declining. However, it is a fact that economically Uighurs have done poorly as an ethnic group. Part of the effort to help them out of poverty was for the Chinese government to offer vocational training and to encourage young women from large multiple-sibling families to accept factory jobs elsewhere in China. The idea was to broaden a woman’s view of the world and raise her life expectations, in addition to earning a better income. The prospect of leaving her family for some faraway city is likely a wrenching and traumatic experience for a young girl whose culture indoctrinates her from birth to prepare for marrying young, having babies and toiling on the family farm for the rest of her life. Often, the factory recruiter would bring along an older Uighur woman who could describe her experiences in a factory and how her savings enabled her to help her parents enjoy better lives and even move into a Chinese city to live with her. Chinese documentary becomes a BBC exposé Beijing-based broadcaster CGTN made a documentary on the process of recruiting Uighur women for factory jobs elsewhere in China. By judiciously omitting certain parts of the video footage, the British Broadcasting Corporation transformed the documentary into an exposé of China forcing young Uighur women into slave labor. Thanks to “Numuves,” who produced a YouTube video comparing the original Chinese version and the adulterated BBC version, we can see the BBC’s adroit skill in misrepresenting the truth. Readers can view both versions and see how the BBC can shamelessly stoop to distort and fabricate in order to demonize China. Unfortunately, the BBC is hardly the only member of mainstream media to help the Western governments blacken China’s reputation and enhance our superior-than-thou stance. YouTube is replete with accusations of The New York Times and other “reputable” members of the media being guilty of slanting reports to reinforce the anti-China bias. Thus Biden, with bipartisan support and the coordinated distortion from the mainstream media, can confidently declare that China’s rise to become a world superpower will not happen on his watch. In reality, China’s rise to becoming the most powerful economy is inexorable and only a matter of time. Whether it will happen during Biden’s watch really depends on how long he expects to be the US president. We hardly have a knee on China’s neck. The day after the frosty and contentious meeting in Anchorage, Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Guilin, China. They expressed solidarity in their views and oppose the “unilateral bullying” by Washington. Wang Yi then went on to Tehran to sign a 25-year agreement with Iran worth $400 billion. China’s cash infusion to Iran will relieve the pressure of American sanctions and in exchange, oil from Iran will enhance China’s energy security. The China-Russia-Iran alliance certainly should give us pause. We gave up trying to beat the Taliban in Afghanistan after 20 years, and that certainly shouldn’t give us confidence to take on the triumvirate. Nevertheless, the Biden team seems determined to follow Trump’s script for confrontation with China. No issue is as sensitive and fraught with danger as Taiwan. Yet we seem determined to raise the tension over the waters around Taiwan and dare China to step over the red line. God help us if we succeed in triggering a collision with China. Most of us won’t likely be around to see how the collision ends. Hear my discussion of this piece on national podcast commencing at about 28 minute mark, https://sputniknews.com/radio_the_critical_hour/202104091082577618-biden-prepares-to-punish-russia-iran-negotiations-in-vienna-will-us-leave-iraq/

Biden needs China to help improve Americans’ lives - Donald Trump did next to nothing for the bottom 90%, and his anti-China policy was a major reason for his failure

First posted on Asia Times. In a recent interview on National Public Radio, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser-designate for the incoming Biden administration, said US foreign policy must serve domestic policy. In other words, “the work that we do abroad fundamentally has to connect to making the lives of working people better, safer, fairer.” So far, so good. The preceding regime under Donald Trump did next to zero for the bottom 90% of the American people. Indeed, improving the lives of the huge middle class has to be the highest priority for the Biden presidency. In fact, Sullivan said, “What Joe Biden is proposing, and what I am reinforcing as the national security adviser, is that every element of what we do in our foreign policy and national security ultimately has to be measured by the impact it has on working families, middle-class people, ordinary Americans here in the United States.” He pretty much repeated his talking points in his subsequent interview with Fareed Zakaria of CNN. Unfortunately, he then talked about changing the foreign policy with respect to China, in which he envisaged an approach that differed only slightly from Trump’s zero-sum confrontation. It’s almost as if Sullivan is slowing down the train heading toward the precipice from 100 miles per hour to 50 but is not getting off the track that’s leading to disaster. Fresh approach needed Rather than looking backward and relying on past grievances, legitimate or otherwise, as the starting point to rebuilding a relation with China, Sullivan should advise President Joe Biden to face the real world that exists today and find a fresh approach that will look to the future and give boost to his domestic agenda. Thanks to four years of Trump’s “America first and nobody else matters,” the US he represented has earned the disdain and disrespect of world opinion. This is not to say that China has taken over, but we can say that the world has moved away from a unipolar world dominated by the US and is moving increasingly to a multipolar world. The China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) just concluded before year-end 2020 is a strong confirmation of such a multipolar world. This agreement had been under discussion for seven years, and Biden asking the European Union to delay concluding the pact would seem reasonable and consistent with the pre-Trump relations between the US and Europe. However, in a world altered by Trump, China and the EU rushed to conclude the deal and presented Biden a fait accompli before he takes office. This is a clear message that the EU is now more interested in protecting its own self-interest than merely following America’s lead. In November, the ASEAN + 5 (China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand) bloc concluded the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, representing the biggest free-trade pact in the world. The US could have been a member of RCEP, but Trump withdrew from the negotiations before the agreement was concluded. When it comes to understanding the significance of free trade, Trump is a woeful country bumpkin. The community of nations has moved on while, thanks to Trump, the US has been left at the station. It’s unrealistic to expect that the US under the new Biden administration can simply pick up from where the US was before the Trump debacle. Sullivan has no middle way As the new national security adviser, Sullivan faces a choice of which direction to take. He can continue to engage China in an ideological confrontation along the lines of condemning alleged human-rights abuses, intellectual-property theft, unfair trade practices, etc, etc, or he can find ways to collaborate with China that would boost the recovery of the US economy and inject much-needed help for the 90% he talked about. He can’t do both. To bring the Covid-19 pandemic under control, the US will have to work with China. Using older, conventional technology, China has developed several vaccines that do not require deep refrigeration and are more affordable for developing countries. Worldwide herd immunity will be possible only if most of the world is inoculated. Just protecting the wealthy nations won’t do. Similarly, China understood the damaging implications of climate change to its economy long before a clueless Donald Trump walked away from the Paris Accord. China has declared its national goal to be carbon-neutral by 2060 – and this is one country that has a habit of meeting its national objectives on or before its stated goal. The US has some catching up to do, and Biden will have his hands full convincing the American people that continuing emission of greenhouse gases is bad for their personal net worth (due to fire, hurricanes and tornadoes) and not just for their health. As the world’s top two emitters, the US and China have to collaborate to set the example for the rest to follow. Trying to collaborate as a pair of frenemies just won’t be as effective or convincing than if the US and China can act in a true partnership on a common mission. Hypocrisy and China’s human rights A favorite talking point of American politicians and mainstream media alike is to attack China for its alleged human-rights abuses. Amazingly enough, these accusations spew from American mouths without the slightest discomfort or sense of embarrassment. This is despite the fact that the US with just 4.4% of the world’s population has 22% of world’s prison population. Furthermore, American prison labor has been inhumanly exploited, with inmates paid slave wages for the benefit of government officials in cahoots with contractors that profit from their output. A typical wage paid for 12 hours of hard labor is US$2.25, for the day not per hour, according to NPR. After deducting for sundries and overhead, the net take-home is a pathetic pittance. Such extreme cruelty speaks for itself and needs no embellishments. It’s not even a case of the pot calling the kettle black. The pot stands alone in a class of its own. Yet when American critics throw their sucker punch at China, they are unrestrained with their fabrications to drive home their arguments. Most recently, they have argued that millions of Uighurs are kept in labor camps and forced to grow cotton, turned into cotton textiles and made into fashion garments for export to the West. None of this has been corroborated by international visitors who went to Xinjiang to see for themselves. On the other hand, China by trial and experimentation has devised a methodology that lifted hundreds of millions out of poverty. As the saying goes, rather than give the poor man a fish to eat, teach him to catch fish so that he will never go hungry. In other words, the poor were taught new skills to improve their livelihood, and that’s irrespective of their ethnicity. To China’s central government, every life matters, and other countries are beginning to take notice. African countries among many are now studying China’s approach to poverty alleviation and seeking China’s advice on how to apply similar measures in their home country. The total eradication of extreme poverty has been unprecedented and is China’s greatest achievement in protecting the rights of its people. Rather than lambasting China for human-rights violations, Sullivan may want to study China’s poverty alleviation programs for ideas on how to use them in America. China’s national policy treats its people far more fairly than in an America that’s rife with racial inequality and xenophobic tension, to say nothing of inequality in education, in opportunity, in income and in protection under law. Bringing manufacturing back In his NPR interview, Sullivan also said the US needs to bring manufacturing back home. Trump thought he could accomplish that goal by raising tariffs on goods made in China. It didn’t work, because American manufacturers moved offshore to avoid the high cost of domestic labor. Imposing import duty does not change the economics of manufacturing at home. The other reason American companies moved to China was to participate in what is now the world’s largest and most booming consumer economy. For many companies, the revenue they have made there during the pandemic more than made up for the losses in the US. However, there is one way for Sullivan to bring manufacturing back to America, just not American manufacturing. He should devise a strategy to attract and welcome more Chinese companies to invest in the US. As China’s economy grows, Chinese companies need to develop a global presence to serve their worldwide customer base. Haier, China’s leading white-goods and home-appliance company, is one classic example of the positive synergy of a Chinese investment in the US. In 2000, the company started with a modest manufacturing operation in South Carolina making wine coolers and small refrigerators popular with college dormitories. By 2016, Haier was successful and financially strong enough to acquire the appliance division from General Electric for $5.6 billion. GE wanted to get out of the consumer-appliance business and Haier saw the purchase as an opportunity to become a world market leader. At the time no one in Washington objected that Haier was a Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE). Perhaps saving the payroll for 12,000 employees made it easier for the politicians to swallow their pride. As I have previously reported, other Chinese investments that predated outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s China-bashing hysteria have greatly benefited the US economy. For example, China’s CRRC Corporation has established two plants to assemble subway cars for major US cities. The cars are state-of-the-art, cost 20% less than any competition, have more than 60% local content, and created 150 jobs at each of the two locations. In addition, the US cities saved hundreds of millions while replacing their dilapidated old metro cars. And about 10 years ago, China Construction of America rebuilt the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in northern Manhattan, doubling the four lanes to eight, and completed the project ahead of schedule and on budget. It was the largest single construction project, at $407 million, ever awarded by the State of New York. It was under joint Chinese and American management but with an American workforce. More recently, Huawei could have materially helped the installation of nationwide fifth-generation (5G) telecommunications network, much sooner and at significantly lower cost than the current situation. But techno-ignorance and irrational fear of Washington threw Huawei under the bus. Huawei, unlike Haier, wasn’t even an SOE. Its sin seemed to be that its chief executive was at one time in the People’s Liberation Army. Torrent of FDI awaits Foreign direct investments nearly always benefit the recipient country because such investment creates employment. Is there any doubt that Chinese investments would accomplish the same? The obvious task facing Sullivan is to reverse the knee-jerk, anti-China bias in Washington and greatly reduce the red tape in the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and turn it into a committee that welcomes rather than rejecting Chinese companies. If Sullivan decides to explore collaboration with China for mutual economic benefit, much of the necessary foundational work has already been done. The China-EU CAI contains provisions of no forced transfer of technology, no hidden subsidies for SOEs, a level playing field for market access to China’s consumer market, and elimination of equity caps or joint-venture obligations. The provisions seem to cover most the complaints and concerns raised by American companies, and therefore China’s deal with the EU should make it easier for the US to hitch a ride and strike a comparable agreement. Certainly, getting along, building trust and benefiting from bilateral investment and trade would be considerably more tolerable than raising tension and hostility.

Debunking China-bashing myths for the good of America

First posted on Asia Times. Anticipating the forthcoming regime change in Washington, a host of academics and pundits have begun to offer suggestions and recommendations on how President-elect Joe Biden should rebuild the bilateral relations with China. Bill Overholt just gave one of the most comprehensive reviews on this subject. He was the first Western observer to see the “rise of China,” when he published a book with that title in 1993 and remained, arguably, the dean of the group of unbiased and objective China watchers in the West. Currently, he is senior research fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Overholt recently gave a lecture titled “Myths and Realities in Sino-American Relations” at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. The edited version of his talk is not yet ready for posting on YouTube, but he generously made a copy of original unedited recording available to me, which Asia Times readers can access by clicking on the link above. The video also includes commentary by Harvard Professor Emeritus Ezra Vogel and former World Bank chief economist Larry Summers. I firmly believe separation of myths from reality is essential to regaining a healthy bilateral relationship between the US and China. Never-ending Tiananmen protest One of the most enduring myths traces its roots to the student protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that occurred in May and early June 1989. Now, on every June 4, virtually every TV screen in the West displays the image of the young man standing in front of a column of tanks as a reminder that the “fight for democracy” was short-lived. That’s how a myth was born. The students in Beijing were protesting official corruption and unfair job assignments after graduation. A gaggle of Western reporters had happened to follow Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on his visit to Beijing. They saw a ragtag group of students huddled on the Square and rhapsodized that they were demanding democracy. Thus the West has not only not forgotten about the Tiananmen incident, but it has become a legendary cudgel used by political leaders and the media to attack China, alleging lack of democracy and violations of human rights. In the 30-plus years since June 1989, China has undergone a dramatic rate of economic reform unprecedented in the history of mankind. In 1989, China’s gross domestic product was barely 6% of that of the US. Since then, China’s GDP has doubled every seven years. Today, China’s economy is closing the gap and is about to surpass the US, most likely within the next five years. China has also lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty and the most recent report indicated that it has eliminated “absolute poverty.” The Wall Street Journal made the same observation. This was accomplished by building roads to remote villages, provide subsidized housing and vocational training and technical guidance to improve farming based on advances in science. Depending on local conditions, the poor improved their livelihoods by raising higher-valued crops, selling handicrafts via the Internet and hosting guesthouses for tourists. The country’s critics do not acknowledge what the Communist Party in China has done in alleviating poverty but concentrate on outlier situations and individuals that are useful to accentuate the ideological differences between the US and China. China-bashers cannot let go of the false memory that the CPC suppressed democracy at Tiananmen Square. How does Washington compare? If Beijing were to join the ideological spitting contest, it could easily point out that Food Stamps given to welfare recipients in the US cannot provide the dignity of a steadily improving livelihood. And Beijing might well ask, “By the way, Washington, how many have you taken out of poverty? And why do people of color get shot and arrested more frequently than the general population?” Another myth is that China threatens US national security, despite 800 to 1,000 American military bases surrounding the globe compared with China’s single one on the Horn of Africa. That base in Djibouti is to support People’s Liberation Army Navy ships protecting the shipping lanes from pirates. A more reasonable explanation is that the Pentagon and the weapons industry need China to justify the annual budget allocation for weapons of mass destruction. Every time a US naval flotilla visits the South China Sea, it comes home feeling less secure, because American sailors increasingly face menacing missiles and weapons of carrier destruction on atolls turned into military bases by China. For decades, American ships and planes had a free run along the coast of China, and it would appear that Beijing is fed up with the constant intrusions and now has the wherewithal to threaten unwelcome visitors. Apparently, the Pentagon’s feeling less “free” after its “freedom of navigation operations” on the South China Sea is not enough to discourage it from sending flotillas halfway around the world, but it is making it worry more and swagger less. Lose-lose trade war Rectifying unfair trade and bringing jobs back to America was the most prominent myth of President Donald Trump’s election campaign, and it failed miserably. The tariffs he levied on imports from China raised the cost of goods to the American consumer, and China’s tariffs in retaliation reduced American exports to China. The tariffs were supposed to reduce the trade imbalance; instead, the US trade deficit got bigger. The tariff war was supposed to bring American manufacturing back to the US, which never happened. Jobs were shipped to China in the first place to take advantage of the lower labor costs. If tariff barriers make it unprofitable to make the product in China, the factory may be forced to locate to lower-cost places such as Vietnam or Bangladesh – but certainly not back to the US, where the high cost base was the original reason to leave. Unfortunately, America’s organized labor vigorously perpetuated the myth that China “stole” America’s manufacturing jobs. The reality is that, as the economy evolved, most jobs were eliminated by automation. As Overholt said in his lecture, “China lost nearly 45 million manufacturing jobs while we were losing 3 million, but Chinese leaders moved most of those displaced people into services while American leaders just tried to shift the responsibility.” There are other myths big and small that get in the way of normal relations between the two largest economies of the world. As I pointed out in my last commentary, if Biden can find ways to collaborate with China, he will see a more rapid economic recovery, job creation, help in infrastructure and booming free trade. I said, “The world is entitled to exhale in relief now that the reign of error by US President Donald Trump is over.” Indeed, with a rational Biden administration headed by a veteran diplomat in Antony Blinken as secretary of state, we can expect dialogue and serious negotiations over contentious issues, but not the endless confrontations, tantrums and outrageous accusations that we witnessed from Mike Pompeo. RCEP, a 15-country free-trade bloc The most telling indication on the future of bilateral relations is the recently concluded Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership among the 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. According to an analysis by Brookings, “RCEP will connect about 30% of the world’s people and output and, in the right political context, will generate significant gains.” Brookings goes on the say, “RCEP could add $209 billion annually to world incomes, and $500 billion to world trade by 2030.” It is the world’s biggest trading bloc, bigger than the European Union and the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement. As Pepe Escobar has explained, RCEP is a real deal. The agreement was driven by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and took eight years to reach consensus. It was just as well that the US was not involved because the Americans would have lost their patience and staying power long before the end. Further, the agreement does not provide for America or anyone to be first. No ideology whatsoever, just free and open trade. With China and Japan, the world’s second- and third-largest economy respectively, as members of RCEP, it’s understandable why even Australia joined. Since Trump became president, the right-wing government in Canberra has been acting like a jackal madly attacking Beijing on all sorts of ideological issues to please its masters, Trump and Pompeo. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government seemed to have forgotten that 37% of Australia’s exports go to China, its most important customer, and only 4% to the US. Recently, China decided to give Morrison a bitter dose of medicine by raising tariffs on Australian exports and letting perishables rot on the dock. With the prospect of Trump no longer glowering in his corner, Morrison was not so stupid as to opt out of RCEP, most likely his last chance to repair his relationship with Beijing and save Australia’s economic future. When Joe Biden moves into the Oval Office on January 20, one hopes that his top diplomat, Tony Blinken, will be ready to deal with China based on reality, free from myths and ideological baggage. Issues of common interest such as climate change and controlling the Covid-19 pandemic would provide easy footing for the two parties to move forward. Blinken has publicly stated that China should be viewed as a competitor. Chinese stateswoman Fu Ying wrote in The New York Times this month that cooperative competition is possible between China and the US. She is former vice-minister of foreign affairs and one of China’s most visible spokespeople on international relations. Constructive competition will make both China and the US stronger and presage positive outcomes for both. The zero-sum confrontation favored by the Trump administration would not have done so. Let’s hope that under Blinken’s leadership, the two countries can move along the path of win-win outcomes.

Biden must avoid lose-lose confrontation with China

The failures of Trump's China policies are obvious, and the way out for his Oval Office successor is just as clear. Subhad posted in Asia Times. Whew, the world is entitled to exhale in relief now that the reign of error by US President Donald Trump is over. His dismal record of endless deception and disruption can be discarded into the dustbin of history. One of President-elect Joe Biden’s highest priorities once he takes office will be to restore the integrity of the US constitution and reaffirm that America remains a democracy. The constitution is the sacred document that the soon to be ex-president and his sidekick and co-conspirator, Attorney General Bill Barr, have sent to the shredder. But that narrative needs to be written by someone more qualified. He or she should consult the daily YouTube series by Glenn Kirschner for a rich repository of evidence that could put Trump and Barr in jail. Biden needs China I would like to address a high-priority repair that is of urgent immediacy for the sake of the future of not only Biden’s term of office but for America. I am referring to the need to turn the bilateral relations between the US and China around. This will not be easy for Biden because demonizing China has had bipartisan support in Washington. Yet failing to do so would cost the US dearly in terms of lives and well-being. It’s literally the difference between prosperity and economic depression, and more importantly between war or peace. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made a shambles of US relations with the rest of the world. If Biden were to take an opposite approach on virtually any of Pompeo’s policies, it would be the correct course of action. This logic surely applies to China. One particularly dangerous situation that the Trump administration, with Pompeo in the lead, has created is regarding Taiwan. They have deliberately flirted with the third rail in US-China relations by sending ranking officials to visit Taipei and by selling a bounty of arms including offensive weapons to Taiwan. Until Trump took over the White House, every American president since Richard Nixon had agreed to the Shanghai Communiqué, and had abided by the principle that there is one China and Taiwan is part of China. To recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation is to risk war, as Trump has edged close to doing, abetted by some of the more rabid Republican senators. What’s worse, the Taipei government led by President Tsai Ing-wen and the independence-minded Democratic Progressive Party has been deluded by Pompeo et al. Tsai is under the impression that if she were to declare independence and provoke an invasion by the People’s Liberation Army, the US military would come to her aid. Therefore, Biden’s first action in the Oval Office must be to tell the Pentagon to stand down and back off from the Taiwan Strait while he sends a message to Tsai that Washington is no longer interested in provoking death and destruction on the island of Taiwan. The military leaders in the Pentagon will be relieved that they won’t have to send young American men and women – yes, the ones Trump calls “losers” and “suckers” – into harm’s way on the other side of the world. Next on the agenda is for the incoming Biden administration to figure out how to reboot relations with China and embark on a path of collaboration and mutual beneficial development. America’s economic health and well-being depend on it. Throw out the ‘blame China’ playbook The determined rendering of China as America’s enemy has been “one hand clapping.” “Blame everything on China” was the Republican playbook for the 2020 election campaign. The disastrous outcome – for the Republicans – on November 3 should be enough incentive for Biden to toss that playbook straight into the trashcan. The Democrats have been as hostile to China as the Republicans have, but on the grounds of accusing Beijing of rampant violations of human rights. This point of view is based on nothing but xenophobia and ignorance. Through decades of concerted efforts, the Beijing leadership working with the local governments has lifted more than 800 million citizens out of poverty. To Beijing, all lives matter, and this is the Chinese leadership’s way of respecting the basics of human rights. In contrast, the US speaks loudly as the self-anointed standard bearer of democracy and upholder of human rights. All the while, people of color in America are discouraged from casting their ballots, are subject to police harassment including being shot for no cause, and find no government helping hand to get them out of poverty. The Ash Center, part of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, recently released a study tracking Chinese people’s approval of their government for over a decade. The survey result shows an approval rate of more than 93%, or roughly twice that for Americans of their own government. Hardly the sentiment of an oppressed populace. The bipartisan desire to put down China has been based on racial bias or holier-than-thou-ideology. But continuing this hostile zero-sum game with China will not help Biden reverse the downward spiral of the US economy. Distributing checks in the name of economic stimulus cannot go on indefinitely. Sooner or later, the checks will bounce. Biden can create jobs with China The only way Biden can create real jobs, as he promised in his election campaign, is to boost the economy on Main Street, not Wall Street. It’s no exaggeration that he can’t do it without working with China. Trump tried to decouple from China and the outcome has been a total disaster. Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping see eye to eye on the need to deal with climate change. Together, they can reinvigorate the Paris Accord and lead a global effort to halt and then reverse the emission of greenhouse gases. That’s an easy starter to rebuilding US-China relations. China has made advances in solar and wind energy, and the companies in those industries are ready to serve the American market by putting manufacturing plants in the US. All the Biden administration has to do is the change the regulations that are biased against investments from China. Most countries welcome foreign investment for manufacturing, whether from China or any other nation, because such investments create jobs. But imbeciles in Washington have taken a twisted view that Chinese investments are for the purpose of stealing from America. As I reported last year, China’s CRRC Corporation has established two assembly plants to assemble subway cars for major US cities. The cars are state-of-the-art, cost 20% less than any competition, have more than 60% local content, and created 150 jobs at each of the two locations. So far, the company has contracts with Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. CRRC was hoping to enter deals with New York and Washington until paranoia in Congress stopped the development on the grounds that subway cars could be used for spying. Really? Better to let wild accusations dominate the conversation than for cities to replace rickety old coaches with new ones at bargain prices? China’s experience and expertise can also help Biden fulfill the need to restore America’s infrastructure. One example is New Jersey-based China Construction America. CCA has been operating in the US for 35 years. About 10 years ago, CCA rebuilt the Alexander Hamilton Bridge in northern Manhattan, doubling the four lanes to eight, and completed the project ahead of schedule and on budget. It was the largest single contract construction project, at US$407 million, ever awarded by the State of New York. When Trump came into office, he talked – a lot – about public/private partnership for renewing infrastructure in America. Just talk, nothing ever got done during his term in office. On the other hand, there are a lot of Chinese companies like the CCA just waiting for the opportunity to participate in the US. They can bid for projects that will mean cost savings for state and federal governments while creating construction-related jobs for American workers. China has a demonstrated record of infrastructure building and has taken its proven expertise around the world as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. There is no reason China could not bring that managerial and planning ability to the US. All it would take is to treat the Chinese as partners without racial bias. China’s economy can give the US a lift Another important reason to want to work with Beijing is that China will be the economic engine to drive the global economy for the foreseeable future. China has already recovered from the Covid-19 epidemic and is showing economic growth while the economies of all other countries, including the US, are still shrinking. China has the world’s largest middle class, with a population of more than 400 million. China’s import market is more than $2 trillion annually. Biden’s top priority for his new secretary of commerce should be to help American businesses sell to China and establish bases inside China. Participating in China’s expanding economy is the best and perhaps only way for the US to accelerate its recovery. American companies already in China can tell you that their sales there are making up for their losses elsewhere in the world. To bring Covid-19 under control, another of Biden’s major campaign promises, will require China and the US to work together. Both are working feverishly to develop vaccines to combat the coronavirus. Being the first country or company to develop an effective vaccine is not the key. What is important is how the vaccines will be distributed so as to eliminate the coronavirus around the world in a most expeditious manner. Pompeo’s idea of “me first” and “me only” for the US is idiocy. Even if America breaks free from the virus while the rest of world is still suffering from the contagion, the US will not be able to keep other parts of world from re-infecting the US. It’s a global pandemic and needs a global solution that the US along with China and World Health Organization can devise together. The current zero-sum game requires constant demonizing of China until the rhetoric reaches fever pitch. A recent example is the hysterical lamentation by US Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite. He takes an orientation trip to the Asia-Pacific region and comes back terrorized by what his overactive imagination tells him of China, but his nightmare has no relation to the reality of what China is actually doing. There is no evidence that China is about to become a military adversary of the US. China can be a formidable economic adversary but only if the US wants it that way. K J Noh and I have outlined a course of action for the Biden administration in Asia Times. The overall strategy is really simple. He just needs to find the many collaborative ways for both countries to win.

The strange saga of Meng Wanzhou

First posted in Asia Times The next extradition hearing in Canada for the Huawei CFO is set for Monday; it is time to end this sad story Until she was detained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police while transiting Vancouver International Airport, the world had not heard of Meng Wanzhou. Now everybody knows that Meng, 48, is the chief financial officer of Huawei and the daughter of Ren Zhengfei, chief executive officer and founder of China’s leading technology giant. The RCMP arrested Meng in respond to a warrant from the US District Court in Brooklyn, New York. The warrant was actually drafted on August 22, 2018, but not delivered to the Canadians until November 30, urging immediate action because Meng was expected to transit Vancouver on December 1 en route to Mexico City. The message from US officials implied that if she was not arrested this time, the next opportunity might not come again for an indeterminate period. Unfortunately for the Canadians, they fell for the story. The Americans had been monitoring Meng’s movements for some time. Between August 22 and December 1, 2018, they noted that she had visited six other countries with extradition treaties with the US, namely Britain, Ireland, Japan, France, Poland and Belgium. Had she been allowed to leave Vancouver, she would have visited Mexico, Costa Rica and Argentina. They too have extradition treaties with the US. Canada the designated patsy With 10 countries to choose from, then US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, directing this operation, concluded that Canada would be the easiest patsy and most willing to act as a vassal state to run this errand for Uncle Sam. Selecting a willing collaborator was important because extradition hearings are almost always complicated, subject to challenges and appeals, and can consume a lot of time. Most countries would prefer not to get involved with such proceedings, since as a disinterested third parties, they have no skin in the game. Indeed, Meng has languished under house arrest at the home she owns in Vancouver since her arrest nearly two years ago. Her next hearing is scheduled for this Monday, October 26. Lawyers familiar with extradition cases have opined that this case could drag on for another five years before all the issues and challenges can be resolved. Much has already been reported about this cause célèbre, but I have seen very few discussions that examine the rotten underpinnings of the case, which I now propose to do in this article. The origin of this case was probably more than 10 years ago as Washington watched the growth and development of Huawei with increasing dismay. Huawei had grown into a major supplier of telecommunication technology, and then threatened to become the world’s leader in that sector. By the time Donald Trump became US president, Huawei had indeed become the leader in 5G, the fifth-generation wireless communication protocol and a leading maker of telecommunication hardware and mobile phones. The Trump administration decided that the way to deal with the rise of Huawei was to use brute force – suppression, harassment and active campaigns with other nations not to buy from Huawei. Two news articles in 2012 and 2013 gave the ad hoc task force the idea to consider accusing the company of violating the US sanctions on Iran. On further reflection, they must have concluded that charging a company in China with violating a US sanction on doing business with another country, in this case Iran, had a low probability of sticking. But another article in 2013 reported that Meng had given HSBC a PowerPoint presentation about Huawei and Skycom. Meng was quoted as saying, “Huawei’s engagement with Skycom is normal and controllable business operation,” and that “as a business partner of Huawei, Skycom works with Huawei in sales and service in Iran.” The “aha” moment for the Trump team was the fact that Skycom had attempted to sell Hewlett-Packard (HP) personal computers to Iran. The sale was never consummated but the intent to sell US technology to Iran was evidently sufficient to charge Skycom with violating the sanctions. So far in the story, it seems to be a slam-dunk for the Trump team. All they did was read some old news articles and found a way to link the printed evidence to the CFO of Huawei. Now bear with me, dear readers, and you will see that the story starts to smell fishy. The most damaging “evidence” offered as part of the charges filed by the US Justice Department with the Canadian courts was the aforementioned PowerPoint Meng had prepared for HSBC. The US prosecutors claimed that the presentation showed Meng had lied to the bank and cause it to violate the sanctions against Iran unknowingly. So it would seem that HSBC had turned state’s evidence to help the US federal court. However, the bank did not necessarily have clean hands in this matter. It issued a press release in 2012 that read in part: “HSBC has reached agreement with United States authorities in relation to investigations regarding inadequate compliance with anti-money-laundering and sanctions laws. “Under these agreements, HSBC will make payments totaling US$1.921 billion, continue to cooperate fully with regulatory and law-enforcement authorities, and take further action to strengthen its compliance policies and procedures.” Even for a major international bank, $1.9 billion is not chump change. But the interesting question not answered is whether “cooperate fully” included giving the PowerPoint slides to the Justice Department. Did the US government agree to deduct some amount from the fine as quid pro quo? US prosecutors not playing with a full deck The legal counsel for Meng were quick to point out to the presiding judge that the PowerPoint deck presented by the US prosecutors was incomplete. Slides that would have portrayed a different position for Meng in this decade-old affair and indicate that she had been transparent with HSBC were left out. As The Globe and Mail observed, it’s highly unusual to go after individual executives carrying out company business rather than indicting the corporation for illegal offenses; indeed, one such example was the case against HSBC. Obviously, the special circumstance for going after Meng was that she was the daughter of the founder of Huawei. The age of this case in the Canadian court is nearing two years. The original hare-brained idea was to hold Meng hostage to put pressure on her father, Ren Zhengfei. It didn’t work. Huawei has grown stronger and increased worldwide sales in the interim. The latest Trump-team move was to deny Huawei access to critical semiconductor technology, which will temporarily set the company back, but at great cost to American high-tech industries – read David Goldman’s forecasts in Asia Times here and here. With the current attention on denying American technology to Huawei, the US may have lost interest in Meng’s incarceration, but Canada is left holding the bag of a stinky mess not of its making. The Big Brother south of the border has skillfully set up Canada to take the fall, and there is no nice way to put the gloss on this little piggy. Washington deliberately gave Vancouver authorities just one day to plan and make the arrest. They did not have time to look at the broader picture, consider the international consequences, or consult with Ottawa. Let’s face it, they were played for suckers – OK, if not suckers at least country bumpkins. Not Justin Trudeau’s brightest moment However, the prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has not exactly been a smart national leader and avoided the sinkhole laid out before him. He had plenty of opportunities to tamp down this sordid affair. Instead he lost control of the situation. Five days after Meng was detained, her arrest was finally made public, and the Chinese Embassy in Canada was furious and demanded her immediate release. Ottawa did not respond. Ten days later, two Canadians were detained in China, heretofore referred to in the media as the “two Michaels.” Beijing denied that the arrests were related to Meng’s arrest, which of course Trudeau wouldn’t buy. But Trudeau also did not acknowledge the reciprocal nature of China’s action. Instead, he accused China of using arbitrary detention to achieve political goals and said that to give in to Beijing would put more Canadians at risk. His reasoning is a real head-scratcher. Urging Canada to release Meng is hardly politics but humanitarian, and it’s hard to see how arranging a prisoner swap would endanger more Canadians – unless Ottawa is planning to intercept more Chinese business executives transiting Canadian airports in the future. There are plenty of voices within Canada telling Trudeau that he can cut off the extradition process if he wants to. One summary reads: “The Extradition Act in 1999 gives the justice minister ‘unfettered discretion to withdraw an extradition at any time during the judicial phase of extradition,’ which offers the federal government a very clear option.” Even though China has significantly reduced its imports from Canada, Trudeau appears undeterred. He apparently treats placating the irascible Donald Trump as more important than Canada’s sovereignty and national interest. He even fired his ambassador to China, a historic first, for publicly suggesting that Trump’s public comments provided grounds to stop the extradition. Too bad Justin is just not a chip of the old block that was his father, Pierre Trudeau. Fifty years ago, Pierre led Canada to establish one of the first diplomatic relations between a Western country and People’s Republic of China, two years ahead of US president Richard Nixon’s visit to Beijing and nine years before formal normalization between the US and China. Now, it appears unlikely that any surprising turnabout development is likely to take place at the court hearing on Monday. Meng’s fate will have to wait for the outcome of the US presidential election on November 3. K J Noh and I have outlined the messy legacy created by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a long list of actions that former vice-president Joe Biden will have to take to right the ship of statecraft if he wins the election. Assuming that he wins, upon taking over the Oval Office, he will have many things to tend to, but one of his easiest tasks will be to drop the extradition process for Meng promptly. It’s long overdue and the decent humanitarian thing to do.

Should Biden adopt Pompeo’s style of diplomacy?

The concluding article of a two-part report offers recommendations on what a Biden administration's China policy should be. Co-written with K J Noh and first posted in Asia Times. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not known to be a particularly original thinker. Every time he attacks China, alleging misbehavior, theft of intellectual property (IP) is always on top of his list of accusations. This is an American complaint about China that dates back to the 1990s and is regularly dusted off for reuse. Lacking literacy in technology, Pompeo does not appear to understand that the nature of IP in technology evolves and changes rapidly. The leader of a particular discipline today can quickly become a follower tomorrow. To compete, companies in Silicon Valley regularly steal, infringe, copy or share by cross-licensing technology to keep up. Chinese technology companies are not averse to using the same strategy. They nick IP when they can, they copy – euphemistically called “reverse engineering” – when they can, and they enter licensing agreements when necessary. The only difference is that the Chinese companies didn’t just stop there but went on to invest in their own research and develop their own proprietary IP. One example is Huawei. Huawei employed 96,000 researchers and spent US$17 billion on research and development in 2019 alone. Not surprisingly, it holds 85,000 patents, including 19% of all standard-essential patents in fifth-generation (5G) telecom technology. Because Chinese engineers are generally better trained, are more motivated and work harder than their American counterparts – and there are many more graduates in this field every year – some Chinese companies have introduced products and technology not seen in the US. Indeed, Pompeo doesn’t appreciate that in some technical disciplines, China has already surpassed the US, and the gap will only increase with time. To suppress China’s technological advances, Pompeo’s approach is to harass Chinese executives, threaten sanctions to restrict their international travel, and bring about sudden unannounced arrests in transit lounges. By denying access to technologies and products where the US is more advanced, such as semiconductor manufacturing, he expects the Chinese to stop dead in their tracks. Unfortunately for the US, the blowback to his approach has near and long-term consequences. An immediate consequence is a significant drop in sales of semiconductor chips to China. Previously, almost 40% of the US output was sold to China. Now, it’s possible that unsold chips will be keeping company with sacks of unsold soybeans. Sadly, American companies can only watch their former advantages get washed down to the sewer by the actions of their own government. Once China has overcome the shock of doing without advanced US technology, companies such as Huawei will press all the harder to develop their own indigenous replacements for the American products. At some point, Silicon Valley will permanently lose a customer and gain a formidable competitor. Pompeo’s simple-minded technology war with China extends to cutting off enrollment of Chinese students in American universities, especially at the graduate-school level. His thinking, shared by many of his Republican colleagues, is that the best and brightest from China come to the country for the express purpose of stealing from the US. In actual fact, first-tier graduate schools such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or University of California at Berkeley would be reduced to a mere shadow of their former robustness if they only had US-born-and-educated students to staff their research labs. China annually generates roughly 10 times as many graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) as the US. Skimming the best from a population 10 times as large is bound to yield candidates with more impressive credentials. Furthermore, colleges and universities in China demand and expect more from their students before allowing them to graduate. If President Donald Trump’s administration really cared about “making America great,” it should have actively welcomed students from China and found ways to entice them to stay and work in the US. Instead, Pompeo and his State Department have introduced deliberate ambiguity on approval of their visa applications, raising doubts on whether they can attend and can count on completing their studies. When Chinese students stop coming Pompeo’s tactics have succeeded. A significant number of Chinese students are changing their plans and deciding against going to the US. About 6,000 Chinese nationals used to obtain their doctoral degrees in science and engineering from American institutions annually. That number will surely decline. Thanks to Trump’s persistent show of xenophobia insisting that China is to blame for the Covid-19 epidemic in the US, the frequency of physical violence against Asians in America has risen drastically. Pompeo’s wish is thus being fulfilled as increasing number of Chinese are going back to China. They are not sticking around to “steal” high-paying jobs from Americans. The case of Cao Yuan comes to mind. He was a physics doctoral candidate at MIT who went home to China for the summer. Then he found out that US Immigration might not allow him to return. His suspension was lifted only after MIT interceded on his behalf. After getting his degree this year, Cao immediately announced his intention to go back to China. America may come to rue this development. For his discovery of room-temperature superconductivity, the journal Nature recognized Cao as first among the top 10 who mattered in science in 2018. When superconductivity becomes common in daily use, China will be massively ahead of the US. Trump and Pompeo may be remembered for their ignorance of what superconductivity was all about. As we can see from this brief survey, Secretary Pompeo is like that overeager player on a soccer team who not only messes up all the plays, but actually scores errant own-goals. There has rarely been such a continuous string of diplomatic defeats and faux pas: If this were a game, he would have been fouled out, traded, or sold long ago. Yet he continues to lead the US into a diplomatic abyss. Pompeo’s boss is also doing his utmost to shake the American people’s confidence in democracy. When Trump asks voters to break the law and cast their ballot twice, he is challenging the legitimacy of mail-in ballots and making it difficult to vote as an absentee or in person. He can then cry foul over the very voter suppression that he has created. Small wonder that three of the world’s oldest and most prestigious scientific publications, Scientific American, New England Journal of Medicine and Nature, could no longer stand idle while Trump made a mockery of democracy. They broke a historic precedent to remain apolitical and publicly endorsed his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, for president. Assuming that Trump does not succeed in stealing the coming election, what would a Biden presidency do? Should the Biden administration go down the same self-destructive rabbit hole? “Dying is easy, comedy is hard,” say performers, but Pompeo’s diplomatic comedy is actually deadly and destructive to the world and the US. Will Biden continue the same dying and deadly stand-up routine in front of a global public that has already left the theater? Will he double down on the lies and the farce? Biden has apparently adopted the China policy statements from the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the reconstituted neocon think-tank from the George W Bush years, as his template for foreign policy on China. This is not encouraging. They have grandfathered in all of Trump’s Sinophobic policies and worked out in obsessive detail to further acts of confrontation and escalation. How Biden can save America To avoid hurtling over the precipice and turning America away from economic and military disaster, we recommend that the Biden presidency take the following actions: Drop CNAS from the foreign-policy advisory committee. The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) led us to the disastrous Middle East quagmire. In a similar fashion, CNAS will lead us into catastrophic war with China. Drop Michèle Flournoy and the old “blue team” neocon or “Pacific pivot” holdovers. They have no business doing politics, given their atrocious records. Facilitate the release of Meng Wanzhou from Canadian custody immediately, and apologize for her kidnapping. Her only crime is being the daughter of the chief executive of a Chinese company the US wants to destroy. Apologize for Biden calling President Xi Jinping a “thug.” The only justification for insulting a head of state in that manner is if you intend to go to war. Stop the “freedom of navigation operations“ (FONOPs) and other belligerent military maneuvers in the South China Sea. Halfway around the world is not your back yard, and besides, the Chinese have no reason to interfere in any of the shipping – it’s all headed for or leaving China. Stop the harassment of Huawei and its supply chain. Compete properly or cede the field, but don’t kidnap its executives. Same for TikTok, Tencent, and Ant Financial. Stop militarizing Taiwan. Stop building an embassy there. Stop using airbases there. Don’t mislead Taiwan into thinking that if it provokes a conflict, the US will come to its aid. Taiwan is part of China, and Taipei and Beijing need to resolve their differences without Uncle Sam in the room. Shut up about Xinjiang. It’s all lies, and the longer you keep up the lies, the more embarrassing when you get found out. Uighur terrorists who fought for al-Qaeda do not become “freedom fighters” when they go back to Xinjiang. Shut up about Hong Kong. Hong Kong is part of China, and it has no capacity or desire to be independent (it gets its food, water, and electricity from mainland China). Funding black-shirted fascists will only result in catastrophe. Shut up about Covid-19. Get your house in order. Implement real public health measures, and a people-centered medical-insurance program. Stop the harassment of scholars and students. The US without Chinese scholars and engineers is a country of MBAs, JDs and gun-toting survivalists – an unproductive failed state heading for a surreal apocalypse. Stop trying to derail the Belt and Road Initiative, and for God’s sake, stop waging wars, coups, assassinations, and explosions in its key nodes. Imagine what it could be like, collaborating in peace, open trade based on relative advantages, and exchange of ideas and people in friendship. America cannot win and China cannot win in a zero-sum game. But China is no threat to the US, and it is no pushover either. Biden can and should make the bold move to the northeast quadrant of game theory where both can win and prosper. This is the concluding article of a two-part report. Read Part 1 here. George Koo is a retired international business adviser and frequent contributor to Asia Times. K J Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer, and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.

Pompeo’s record a litany of failure

In the first article of a two-part report, we examine the damage the US secretary of state has done at home and abroad. Co-written with K.J. Noh and posted on Asia Times Mike Pompeo, otherwise known as the international man of catastrophe, by wide acclaim, has earned a label as the worst secretary of state in the history of the United States, while appropriately enough serving under its worst president. That president, Donald Trump, has torn the US constitution to shreds, and he has an absolutely corrupt chief law-enforcement officer, Attorney General Bill Barr, to provide him a temporary Get out of Jail Free card. Until and unless regime change takes place after the November election, Pompeo is safe under the same protective custody. As the US top diplomat, Pompeo’s mission is to persuade nations to take positions aligned with the US and in opposition to China. If a nation fails to be persuaded, especially when it’s against that nation’s self-interest, Pompeo’s technique is to compel it to comply with the threat of sanctions. Levying sanctions hasn’t been limited to the usual wide-angle shotgun blasts at Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela, but the US has also targeted the chief prosecutor and other officials of the International Criminal Court for investigating Pompeo for possible war crimes while he was head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Just as his boss, Trump, sees himself as above the laws of the United States, Pompeo, who sees the United Nations, World Health Organization and other international bodies as subordinates to the US, certainly would not allow the possibility of being subject to international laws. The sanction is his way of saying we’re not going to allow you to travel freely to continue your investigation and we’re not going to take you seriously. He lied, cheated and stole In a moment of braggadocio and indiscretion – and poor judgment – he chortled before a group of students and boasted how as head of the CIA, he lied, cheated and stole. All in the CIA training manual, he said. The students were not amused. Neither was the public. Since becoming the head of the State Department, his actions confirm that his modus operandi has not changed. Pompeo has remained true to his character in his campaign against China. With no sense of irony, a typical preamble to his speeches on China goes: “Communists always lie, but the biggest lie is that the Chinese Communist Party speaks for 1.4 billion people who are surveilled, oppressed, and scared to speak out.” He failed to note that annually, 170 million of these deceived Chinese people travel as tourists abroad, and then choose voluntarily to return to this “open-air prison” of surveillance, oppression and terror. It probably did not occur to him that this allegation may be more projection than anything resembling truth, given the fact that the US has the largest prison population of any country – five times as great on a per capita basis as China’s – and the surveillance and harassment of whistleblowers and dissidents is routine. On October 6, Pompeo lashed out against China and exhorted the Quad – the US-Japan-Australia-India military-strategic formation that the US is trying to consolidate against China – to stand against China and its evil, corrupt actions: “I also look forward to … renewing our resolve to protect our precious freedoms and the sovereignty of the diverse nations of the region. “As partners … it is more critical now than ever that we collaborate to protect our people and partners from the CCP’s exploitation, corruption, and coercion.” The silence from the Quad members was deafening – no agreement or statement was issued after their ministerial meeting in Tokyo. The Japanese government, in particular, in a mind-bending act of diplomatic insouciance, insisted flat out, “This Quad meeting is not being held with any particular country in mind.” Sorry, His Holiness is not in On September 30, the Vatican rebuffed a request from Mike Pompeo for an audience with Pope Francis, and accused the secretary of state of trying to drag the Catholic Church into the US presidential election by denouncing its relations with China. On September 9, in a speech to member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations encouraging them to gang up against China, he stated, “Don’t let the Chinese Communist Party walk over us and our people. You should have confidence and the American will be here in friendship to help you.” The good secretary seemed to have forgotten that if anyone has posed a historical threat to Southeast Asian countries, it is the United States. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. On July 23, at the Nixon Library, Secretary Pompeo in a warmed-over version of Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” speech declared the end of US-China détente, and announced a new cold war: “Washington is seeking to change Beijing’s behavior, [against] a generational threat, a totalitarian and hegemonic regime.… Free nations … can successfully force a change of China.” To make this argument, Pompeo listed a litany of imagined, projected, and concocted wrongs committed by the Chinese: spreading Covid-19, stealing jobs and intellectual property, trade abuses, violations of international law, and of course, the catchall, being “Marxist-Leninist.” After all this hyperventilating about China’s menace “to our economy and way of life,” he called for all nations to come together to fight China, to “triumph over this new tyranny.” “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change … because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity…. It’s time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies.” Pompeo acted as if he was the visionary to lead the 1.4 billion Chinese out of the wilderness and overthrow the Beijing regime. Lies about China can be very profitable To make his case for demonizing China, Pompeo will use any source of questionable legitimacy. One example was a paper written by Li-Meng Yan, a virologist and at the time of publication a postdoctoral student at Hong Kong University. Her paper claimed that the Covid-19 virus was created in a Wuhan lab. Her finding was sensational as it seemed to authenticate Trump’s and Pompeo’s accusation that China should be held accountable for the pandemic. The popular media went wild with the story, even though those in scientific circles criticized the non-peer-reviewed paper as weak on science. Rapid Reviews: COVID-19, a collaboration between the University of California at Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, quickly solicited reviews of the Yan paper by four renowned scientists in the field and their conclusion was: “This manuscript does not demonstrate sufficient scientific evidence to support its claims. Claims are at times baseless and are not supported by the data and methods used. Decision-makers should consider the author’s claims in this study misleading.” Those reviews followed the publication of the Yan paper by about two weeks. It’s a safe bet that the refutation is unlikely to attract the attention of the mainstream media. An added side note in the comment section was the observation that the co-authors listed in Yan’s paper did not exist but were fictitious – in other words, a blatant lie. So what could have motivated Yan? By now, it has become quite clear that providing material for China-bashing can be very lucrative business. Gordon Chang showed that he could publish a book on China that totally missed the mark – instead of economic collapse, China is about to become the largest economy in the world – and instead of striking out, he became an anti-China media star for the last 20 years. Peter Navarro did even better. He wrote a book and a documentary titled Death by China, a complete work of fiction, with imaginary “expert” “Ron Varra,” who turned out to be the anagrammatic alter ego of Navarro himself. This China-bashing turned him from being a failed politician and outcast academic into the holder of a seat in the inner circle at the Trump White House. The latest to follow this career trajectory is Adrian Zenz. In just two years, out of nowhere, he became known as an expert on Uighurs in Xinjiang by claiming that between a million and 1.8 million Uighurs were being held in concentration camps. No one really questioned the accuracy of the report nor the veracity of this so-called expert, a millenarian Christian theologian who claims that Jews will be exterminated in the Rapture, that women should not pursue careers outside the home, that children should be physically abused “according to scripture,” and that homosexuality is the work of the Antichrist. With those impeccable credentials, Zenz was instantly embraced by the media, the Trump administration and the US Congress. Zenz visited Xinjiang 13 years ago, but it is not likely that he was drawing any substance from that visit. One million people is a lot to be held and would be difficult to hide: The US has more than 6,000 such facilities to house its inmate population. Satellite photos offered as evidence of such camps turned out to be schools and office buildings. These compounds all have fences and walls on their perimeter. Apparently, that is all it takes to qualify as evidence for prison camps. Foreign visitors to Xinjiang of more recent vintage have found no evidence of large numbers of locals incarcerated. If the numbers claimed by Zenz are correct, it would imply that a very large percentage of working Uighur adults are incarcerated. However, life on the streets and markets appears relaxed and normal. Indeed, most people living in Xinjiang, of any ethnicity, seem to be beneficiaries of China’s campaign to lift everyone out of poverty. About 9% of China’s population belong to an ethnic minority, of which 55 are recognized. Where any given ethnic group dominates a geographical region, an autonomous government is established to allow some degree of local governance. Ethnic minorities are encouraged to preserve their own culture and attend bilingual schools where Mandarin is taught alongside their own native tongue. During the draconian era of one child per family throughout China, ethnic minorities were permitted to have two or three children. Remote, hard-to-reach areas of China were understandably the last to feel the benefits of Beijing’s poverty-alleviation program, regardless of the ethnicity of the people living there. Local governments’ mandate is to strive to improve the welfare of the people under their care. But all lives matter in China In China, voting occurs at the local level for representatives to the local people’s congresses. Members of the local congress then elect from within that body those who will become members of the provincial congress, who then elect those to represent their province at the National People’s Congress. Thus each tier of representation becomes more selective, rigorous, and professional. While this differs from the direct suffrage practiced in the West, it promotes competence and dedication, and a government where all lives truly matter, and none are kept in ghettoes by design. Poverty alleviation follows a general pattern. The local governments with the support of the central government build roads to connect the remote village to the economically upscale towns and cities to facilitate the sale of their produce and local goods. This policy accords with studies that show the single most important factor in alleviating and escaping the cycle of poverty is good transportation access. Where transportation infrastructure was too difficult to build, the local government would provide the option of heavily subsidized housing with electricity and water to encourage poor villagers living in remote places to relocate to nearby urban centers with easier access to schools and health care. Vocational training along with relocation provides the farmers with new skills and chance to raise their income. One example was presented here. Technical experts would visit the poor village and appraise the potential to raise incomes and provide guidance. Sometimes the recommendation is to switch to higher-valued crops, other times just introduce ways to improve yield. With the popularity of streaming over the Internet to promote sales and with greatly improved roads and rail, and rapid payment and delivery systems, it is now possible to sell exotic fruits, local goods, and medicinal herbs available in one remote region to consumers all over China. Attractive handicrafts unique to a particular ethnic group can be introduced and popularized via streaming. As a consequence of being a huge and fast-growing economy, China has a burgeoning middle class. Relatively new to consumption, the appetite of the middle-class Chinese for goods is a huge market not remotely near saturation. By dedicated and determined efforts, Beijing can proudly proclaim that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of subsistence living. Yet the West with its comfortable standard of living continues to accuse China of human-rights abuses. Third World countries make no such accusations, just express admiration for China and hope that China will help them to attain higher standards of living through its experience and expertise and via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Pompeo has been busy telling African countries that China’s BRI is nothing more than a debt trap. Of course, drawing from his own personal background, it’s easy for him to project what he would do and imagine that China is pulling off a con. By and large, African nations welcome the opportunity to collaborate with China and take advantage of its infrastructure expertise and willing investment. These nations react to Pompeo with disdain and affront. Privately, they say to themselves, “Do you think we’re so dumb and easily swindled, or what?” A port and airport project in Sri Lanka has been frequently cited by Pompeo and others as the “see, I told you so” example. The truth of the matter was that the Sri Lankan government was too ambitious and overestimated the expected revenue stream to be derived upon completion of the port and airport. When Sri Lanka could not meet the repayment schedule, China took over the management of the port and airport. In experienced hands, the Chinese operator has raised efficiency and increased utilization so that profitability is now within reach. Once revenue is sufficient to service the loan, the projects will revert to Sri Lanka. Just this month, Pompeo went to Croatia to tell the country to stay away from China’s BRI. In a press conference in front of the Dubrovnik harbor, Pompeo and Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković stood side by side, and Plenković was asked by the media his thoughts about the BRI. The reporter prefaced her question by saying that Pompeo had denounced the BRI as a predatory scheme to buy a Chinese empire. In response, Plenković said China was very smart to use the BRI to build its relationship with Central and Eastern European countries. He said he had met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang five of six times since coming into office, is fully aware of all aspects of China’s deal, and believes Beijing will be fair and behave in accordance with international norms. Plenković looked over at Pompeo as he praised Croatia’s relationship with China. Apparently, he did not feel the need to be diplomatic before the emissary from the US. This is the first article in a two-part report. Part 2 will look at what to expect from US diplomacy under a Joe Biden presidency. George Koo is a retired international business adviser and frequent contributor to Asia Times. K J Noh is a journalist, political analyst, writer, and teacher specializing in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific region.