America is in for a political upheavel of Titanic dimension

 

By any and all account, the debate between sitting president Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump foreshadows an unimaginable political outcome that will be much worse than choosing the lesser of two evils. 

On the one hand, we have a pathological liar, full of bluster ignoring questions he doesn’t want to answer, just to browbeat a doddering old man seemingly incapable of organizing any kind of response, much less carefully reasoned rebuttal.

 

The latter is of course Joe Biden, the current president. Next morning, the mainstream media chorus promptly calls for Biden to renounce his candidacy and release the delegates committed to his nomination as the candidate of the Democratic Party. They say he can best serve his country by not serving any longer.

 

However, Biden’s supporters say any old man on the verge of senility is entitled to a lapse or two. Let him continue his campaign on his record as “one of the best presidents ever.” Presumably, the American voters will be (fingers crossed) discerning enough to see the difference between a doer and a blowhard.

 

So just what has Biden accomplished in his first term of office (we’ll come to Trump later.)? I would like to count the way.

 

Biden can claim a strong economy despite inflation and national debt balloon

 

For investors in the stock market, they applaud Biden for a strong economy as their equity holdings have generally expanded and they happily counted their gains. But the interest rate did not come down and inflation held steady. 

 

The majority of Americans, perhaps as much as 60%, that are not enriched by Wall Street feels the pain as their costs of living increases beyond their pocketbook. Even households with annual income of $100,000 complain that they can’t keep up.

 

Biden forgave student loans and handout money to those hurt by Covid and were not gainfully employed. The government handouts buoyed the economy but the federal debt continues to climb skyward, soon to top $35 trillion and annual interest payment will go over $1 trillion.

 

Biden’s answer to Trump’s make America great again (MAGA) was build back better (BBB). It’s hard to see how Biden’s BBB is outdoing MAGA. Highways are still riddled with potholes, bridges are shaky and trains derail all too frequently.

 

The homeless people that occupy American cities show no signs of receding. They remain an eyesore, a public health hazard and a blight on supposedly the wealthiest country in the world. Their cries for help do not register on Washington’s decibel meter.

 

Supposedly, Biden has tightened gun control across the country. Looking at the daily fatality from gun violence and incidences of mass shooting, it’s hard to notice that he has made a difference.

 

Biden gets F for foreign policy

 

Biden’s foreign policy can be kindly summarized as an unmitigated disaster. The damage to the U.S. prestige and credibility is epic and beyond recovery.

 

Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, as Biden’s chief emissary goes around the world, oblivious to his wearing a hospital gown, exhorting everyone to obey “rule based international order.” As he goes by, everyone can see that his international order is whatever he’s defining it to be and ignored when it suits the U.S.

 

The abrupt, near panic withdraw from Afghanistan left many loyal Afghans that served the American military in a lurch. Biden then promptly froze assets held in America that belonged to the Afghan nation, a surprise and shock to the rest of the world.

 

After Afghanistan, the Biden team revised their strategy to let others do the fighting for the U.S. Ukraine fighting the proxy war against Russia was a prime example.

 

Washington encouraged Ukraine to encroach Russian interest since 2014, which was before Biden’s regime. His team encouraged Ukrainian President Zelensky to continue to provoke Russia with promise of arms and money. 

 

Russian president Putin finally lost patience and invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and now Zelensky is in a pickle. He is down to fighting to the last Ukrainian or sue for peace. Every time during this prolonged war, when Zelensky considered negotiating for ceasefire, the West urged him to continue on. The American reputation as the defender of democracy now rests on Ukraine winning the war.

 

If Zelensky is not allowed to negotiate for peace, he will need to push for NATO to join the fray. Putin has recently proposed a multipoint settlement for peace which was ignored by the West. He also promised to initiate first use of nuclear weapons if NATO were to enter the war. This is a threat that Biden has blithely ignored until it will be too late for regret.

 

Russia thrived thanks to Biden’s blunder

 

Biden thought he dealt Russia a death blow by confiscating their assets held in the U.S. and kick Russia off The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network thus depriving Russia right to participate in the most popular international payment and settlement system.

 

Then with the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Russia was deprived of the EU as its most important customer for their oil and gas. Surely, this is the end of Russia’s economy. Instead, it was the EU economy that tanked when the EU countries lost their access to Russia’s cheap energy.

 

Russia not only survived but thrived. They turned to new customers such as China and India for their energy exports and they greatly expanded their trade with China and rest of the world. Shortly after Biden’s sanctions against Russia and denying Russia access to the dollar, the Russian economy has exploded to surpass even Japan.

 

Biden’s move to weaponizing the dollar backfired big time. He has personally destroyed the full faith and credit of the American greenback and most of the world now has de-dollarizing their reserve holding occupy their minds.

 

At one time Putin thought one of the peace dividends from the end of the Cold War was for Russia to join the European community. Instead, Russia is being embraced by the global community not aligned with the U.S.

 

Biden’s worse miscalculation has to be his policy with China. Rather than dismantling Trump’s tariff war on imports from China, he double down by imposing more tariffs on goods made in China. China responded with counter tariff of their own and by becoming the number trading nation with 80% of the world.

 

China has emerged as the world’s leader in electric vehicles (EV) and the technology for batteries for the EV. The wise thing to do is to invite the Chinese companies in to the U.S. to invest in factories and create jobs for Americans.

 

Instead, Biden has preemptively imposed a 100% tariff on EVs from China, even before China has sold any to the American market. Chinese EV car makers are building assembly plants in Mexico, and Washington will counter with appropriate tariff, notwithstanding the free trade treaty that exists between the U.S. and Mexico.

 

China is Biden’s worst miscalculation

 

Biden has insisted that he is not in favor of decoupling with China. Yet he could have a partial loaf of China’s EV and battery technology by insisting on Chinese companies forming partnership with American companies in order to enter the U.S. market. A turnabout of China’s old playbook. Now he gets no loaf.

 

Allowing low-end Chinese EVs into the U.S. would have given the low-income Americans a chance to own affordable transportation that would enhance their prospect for employment. Proliferation of EVs of any make would help the U.S. meet their commitment for lowering greenhouse gas emission.

 

Biden is determined to suppress China’s development at any cost, even at great harm to our own economy. Denying access to advanced semiconductor technology has meant American chip makers and chip making equipment companies forego a major part of their revenue. That’s a significant portion of loss sales that will not come back.

 

Forcing China to go it alone is a big mistake. Even in the 1960’s, an isolated China developed their atomic bomb and quickly followed with the hydrogen bomb on their own. Most recently, they sent a probe to the other side of the moon, extracted samples and safely brought the samples back. No other country has accomplished this feat. 

 

There is no question that China has the technological prowess to develop the semiconductor technology that they will need. There is no small irony that the Pentagon weaponry depends on China’s supply chain of not so esoteric chips that perhaps nobody else bothers to make anymore. 

 

Lastly, the American presence in the Middle East under Biden has become a bit of a joke. The mighty carrier, USS Eisenhower, had to hightailed out of the Red Sea to get away from missiles from the Houthis, a rag tag band of fighters that do not even qualify as a tiny national army.

 

Of course, Biden’s waffling and inability to stop the Gaza genocide has dashed American prestige to smithereens in the eyes of the Arab world. 

 

More importantly, the strongest segment of the American public protesting the atrocities being inflicted by Israel on the Palestinians is the young voters. Heretofore, the Gen Z has been one of the strongest supporters for Biden. Gaza is likely to keep many at home and not vote.

 

So, what about candidate Donald Trump? This man is unprecedented in American history. He trampled the U.S. Constitution and violated laws at will. He is a disgrace but the elders of the Republican Party are even more shameful. They kowtow to him because winning is more important than protecting the integrity of the nation.

 

Were it not for the wheel of justice that grinds at snail pace under the Biden administration, Trump should already be sitting in some federal penitentiary. Now he will be counting on pardoning himself for all criminal activity upon entering the White House again.

 

What could be worse than Trump as President for life?

 

How will he perform the second time around? He is someone that believes tax revenue from import tariff as “free money.” Obviously, he will need a lot of help to come up with some rational-sounding domestic and international policies.

 

Already, Peter Nevermore, nee Navarro, is crowing and claiming credit as the originator of the anti-China policy that has continued on today. With him as the Trump whisperer, we can expect that not much will change in the bilateral relations with China.

 

Unless Chinese president Xi Jinping invites Trump to China for another official and formal head of state visit. Trump loves the pomp, ceremony and the attention that goes with the oom pah pah—of course the cheeseburger has to be part of the state banquet. He may even propose making the visit an annual event.

 

The bright side of a Trump presidency, should he deliver on his rhetoric, is to get out of NATO. The war machine would fall apart without U.S. participation and that’s a very good thing.

 

He has promised to stop the Ukraine war on day one. Not sure how he will go about doing that, but that is also a good thing.

 

He may decide that sending the U.S. navy to the South China Sea is an unnecessary expense and does not make America great. For that matter, posting American military around the world doesn’t make sense either and he could cut the defense budget by bringing our boys and girls home.

 

Not sure how he will finesse the Gaza situation since his biggest campaign backer places pro-Israeli interest over American interests.

 

The dark side of Donald Trump is to declare that he has decided he should serve as the U.S. president for life and the compliant Republican Congress rushes to endorse and the Supreme Court votes 6-3 in affirmation.

 

There you have it, my fellow Americans. Upon the next election, we will either have to rush in hospice care for one, or we will have the other announcing his cabinet from prison. Egad, can it get any worse than that?

  

美國自動導航進入自毀之途

Published in SingTao Daily <a href="" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="https://www.singtaousa.com/2024-02-29/美國自動導航進入自毀之途%EF%BC%88下%EF%BC%89/4777055" target="_blank">here</a>.

在聯邦參議院最近的一次聽證會上，來自阿肯色州的參議員科頓（Tom Cotton）顯然很難理解，一個新加坡公民可以長得像中國人，說話像中國人，但卻不是中國共產黨黨員。在科頓對TikTok執行長周受資（Chew Shou Zi）的質詢中，他甚至連周受資的妻兒是美國公民都懷疑。

對於科頓和其參議員同僚來說，這一切都是很嚴肅的事，因為他們是以保護美國國家安全、抵禦迫在眉睫的中國威脅的名義進行調查的。顯然，科頓在哈佛接受的教育並沒有告訴他，新加坡距離北京數千公里，是一個獨立於中國的主權國家，抑或他只是在嘩眾取寵，迎合選民的低級趣味。

大約在同一時間，《南華早報》報道說，中國科學家研製出了一種「改變遊戲規則的電子戰軍事監控設備」。該報稱，實際上，他們的突破將使中國人民解放軍能夠實時發現並精確定位軍事目標，令其無處藏身。

這是中國在軍事武器領域取得的一系列技術進步中的最新進展，表明中國在武器研發方面已經趕超美國。其他技術進步包括高超音速導彈、隱形戰鬥機和無人機、航母上的先進發射系統，以及建造比美國多得多的海軍艦艇的能力。

當美國忙於從每個床底下搜捕「全中國」的間諜時，中國一直在投資硬件和軟件開發，以消除美國的軍事優勢。

每一次，當中國研發出可以對抗美國先進武器的武器時，只會助長美國對中國威脅的偏執，使五角大樓的侏儒們爭先恐後地申請更多預算撥款來研發下一代殺人機器。這樣，你壓我一頭，我壓你一頭，惡性循環下去。

華盛頓的戰略規劃者們也非常擅長根據「假如我是中國人」的預測來構造可能的情景。五角大樓的一些將軍推測，解放軍將在2027年做好入侵台灣的準備。突然之間，大陸的入侵意圖變成了事實，警鐘長鳴，備戰開始。

將中國描繪成威脅於業務有利

當然，將中國描繪成一個來勢洶洶的威脅有利於美國的保護業務。任何認為中國是威脅的國家都會成為美國安全保護的客戶。美國在全球擁有800多個軍事基地，擁有這些基地需要理由。

另一方面，世界正在清醒地認識到，中國不會對任何人構成威脅。中國促成了沙特和伊朗間的和平協議，並與150個國家建立了「一帶一路」倡議。北京在中國境外沒有任何軍事存在，除了在吉布提（Djibouti）有一個補給基地，而且它堅持不干涉他國內政。

據傳，就連美國也要求中國代表美國與伊朗和也門胡塞武裝交涉。胡塞武裝一直在紅海向美國和以色列的航運發射導彈，迫使船隻繞道非洲之角，而不是通過蘇伊士運河，造成了嚴重的經濟混亂。

儘管美國在世界各地都有基地，但強大的美國軍隊對也門的胡塞叛軍幾乎束手無策，對伊朗也毫無影響力。胡塞武裝同情加沙的巴勒斯坦人，與美國人對著幹，贏得了全世界的聲望和認可。中國無法向美國提供任何補救措施，只能要求拜登總統說服以色列立即停火。

當小島國瑙魯與台灣斷交承認中華人民共和國時，美國國務卿布林肯飛往南太平洋訪問其他島國，要求他們守住底線，不要轉變外交關係。作為回報，他承諾向這些國家的政府提供數十億美元的幫助。

「白人不可信」

布林肯來了又走了，華盛頓並沒有隨之提供資金。帕勞和馬紹爾群島的首腦不耐煩了，寫信給華盛頓，先是私下溝通，然後是公開信，告訴全世界，美國人的名譽並不值錢。

此時此刻，世界看到的是昔日的霸主在一幫烏合之眾面前束手無策，在阻止以色列在加沙的種族滅絕行動方面毫無希望，向小島國開出無法兌現的空頭支票。

時任總統特朗普試圖「讓美國再次偉大」，開始美國與中國的經濟競爭，拜登上台後繼續加劇，現在又如何呢？

首先，特朗普聲稱對從中國進口的商品徵收關稅是美國財政部可「免費」獲得的資金，這對於任何學過「經濟學101」基礎課的人來說，都是可笑的。然而拜登卻繼續執行關稅政策，因為他害怕得罪那些愚蠢到相信特朗普「免費」政策的美國選民。（進口關稅實際上損害了納稅人的錢袋子解釋起來要困難得多）。

拜登還加倍努力，提供激勵措施讓製造業回歸美國，或至少將製造業從中國「近岸化」到更友好的國家。值得稱讚的是，美國的製造業得到了適度的回流，這些製造業可以高度自動化，而且不依賴於在美國已經找不到的熟練生產工人。

確實，相當一部分低價值商品的製造業確實離開了中國，其中一個熱門目的地就是越南。越南人的職業道德與中國不相上下，因此取得了一定程度的成功。但這些業務依賴於在中國建立起來的供應鏈，事實上，許多業務實際上由遷往越南的中國公司所擁有。

最近的貿易數據顯示，雖然中國對美國的直接出口有所下降，但對越南和墨西哥的出口卻大幅增長，與後者對美國出口的增長同步。換句話說，供應鏈延長，效率降低，是對美國貿易政策的直接反應。

中國的電動汽車生產正在風靡全球，超越日本、德國和韓國，成為世界第一大汽車出口國。為了阻止中國電動汽車進入美國市場，拜登對其加徵了25%的進口關稅。中國的回答是在墨西哥建立組裝廠。

由於種種原因，拜登的半導體製造業回歸戰略也令人大跌眼鏡。

台積電（TSMC）在屈服於美國的壓力，將一條先進的生產線遷往亞利桑那州鳳凰城時發現，建造和運營這家技術難度極高的工廠所需的熟練工人十分缺乏。首條生產線的投產日期至少推遲了一年。

台積電曾獲承諾搬遷工廠將獲得數十億元的補貼，但它仍在等待這筆錢。與此同時，美國土生土長的英特爾公司將在美國建造一座不那麼先進的新晶圓廠，並預計可及時獲得數十億元的補貼。如果台積電被拋棄，沒有人會感到意外。

中國的「崩潰」未成現實

主流媒體的專家們目睹中國大型房地產控股公司近期破產時，高興地大笑起來。他們推斷並預測中國經濟將再次出現負增長，甚至全面崩潰。

然而，位於瑞士的經濟政策研究中心今年發表的一篇論文宣稱：「中國現在是世界上唯一的製造業超級大國。其工業產值超過其後9個製造業大國的總和」，是美國的三倍，日本的六倍。

作為世界製造業超級大國，中國在製造戰爭武器和工業產品方面能夠輕鬆超越美國也就不足為奇了。

如果西方觀察家不是忙於貶低中國的努力，將中國的進步歸咎於知識產權盜竊和山寨，他們也許會意識到，中國在電動汽車、造船、基礎設施建設和高鐵發展方面佔據主導地位是不可避免的，因為中國順應了巨大且不斷增長的國內市場的需求。

另一個與中國競爭的對策是拜登政府對中國的高科技實施制裁和出口限制，特別是限制半導體技術和人工智能（AI）晶片。

根據美國之前與俄羅斯打交道的經驗，經濟制裁和禁運適得其反，極大地促進了俄羅斯對非與美國結盟世界的出口，使盧布升值至新高。

事實上，去年9月，華為推出了一款功能可與蘋果最新款iPhone媲美的智能手機，該手機採用了華為自研晶片設計，由中國境內的中芯國際（SMIC）工廠製造，令美國大吃一驚。三年來，華為一直被禁止使用台積電的晶圓廠服務，但它找到了繞過限制的辦法。

有決心就有出路

想方設法繞過美國的制裁和禁運是不可避免的，也是遲早的事。

中國的人口是美國的四倍，每年產生的科學、技術、工程和數學（STEM）畢業生是美國的六倍，中產階級消費市場比美國總人口還要大。

中國的工業產能是美國的三倍，勞動力的技術水平也與時俱進，為甚麼美國要對在經濟上被中國趕超憤憤不平呢？

與此同時，除了爭論在南部邊境修牆阻擋非法移民之外，我還沒有看到美國在重建基礎設施方面取得多少成就。讓人哭笑不得的是，今年年初看到的唯一一則報道是修復了橫跨紐約東河的漢密爾頓大橋。

這實際上是在2013年，由位於附近新澤西州的一家中國建築公司在美中友好時期完成的。

美國發往烏克蘭的彈藥已經告罄，而紅海邊的胡塞武裝也煩得要命，就像打不死的小強。華盛頓要說服台北政府挑釁台灣海峽對岸的巨龍，運氣不會太好，而且在全世界的威望也在日漸低落。

《亞洲時報》的戈德曼（David Goldman）寫道：「從blob（外交精英小集團）手中拯救美國的未來」。在我看來，「blob」是一個更形象的說法，指的是在華盛頓發瘋的新保守派以保護國家安全為名在世界各地製造緊張局勢。他們製造的緊張局勢越多，軍工企業拿到的下一代武器訂單就越多。

美國人通過增加國債和印製更多鈔票來為武器買單。總有一天世界上所有人都會認識到美元正在穩步貶值，並決定不再持有。面對可疑的信仰和可信的衰落，美國將陷入掙扎。

戈德曼的結論是：「我們無法阻止中國的崛起，但我們可以崛起得更快」。哇，我們可以嗎？

撥款5億元抨擊中國

這個月我看到國會撥款5億元用於「對中國的負面新聞報道」。我想，阻止崛起的一個辦法就是把每一次崛起都變成中國崩潰的故事。我們是世界上最強大的宣傳機器，我們可以（而且已經）把每一個故事都描繪成與事實恰恰相反的樣子。

讓7億多人擺脫貧困可以被報道為人權暴行。對維吾爾族青年進行再教育，引導他們遠離恐怖主義，可以被視為奴役。普洛西認為，香港抗議者暴力破壞財產、殺害無辜旁觀者的行為可以被描述為「美麗的」爭取民主和自由的鬥爭。

自遮雙目入群峰，就是美國的取道方式。

America on autopilot to self-inflicted destruction

Firat posted in <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2024/02/america-on-autopilot-to-self-inflicted-destruction/" target="_blank">Asia Times</a>.

At a recent hearing in the US Senate, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas apparently had trouble understanding that a citizen of Singapore can look like a Chinese, talk like a Chinese and yet not be a member of the Communist Party of China. In Cotton’s questioning of Chew Shou Zi, the chief executive of TikTok, even the fact that Chew’s wife and children are American citizens seemed suspicious to him. 

This was all serious stuff for Cotton and his fellow senators as they probed in the name of safeguarding America’s national security against the looming threat of China. Apparently, Cotton’s Harvard education did not tell him that Singapore is thousands of kilometers from Beijing and is a sovereign nation independent of China. Or maybe he was just grandstanding to cater to the lowbrow mindset of his constituents.

At around the same time, the South China Morning Post reported that Chinese scientists had developed a “game-changing military surveillance device for electronic warfare.” In effect, the paper said, their breakthrough will enable the People’s Liberation Army to find and pinpoint the quadrants of a military target in real time with no place to hide.

This is the latest of a series of technological advances China has made in military arms that indicate it has either caught up with or surpassed the US in weapons development. Others include hypersonic missiles, stealth fighters and drones, advanced launch system on aircraft carriers, and the capacity to build many more naval vessels than the US.

While the US has been busy hunting for spies from the “whole of China” under every bed, China has been investing in hardware and software developments to neutralize American military superiority.

Each time, as China develops a counter to America’s advanced weaponry, this simply feeds US paranoia about China’s threat and causes the Pentagon gnomes to go scurrying for more budget allocations to develop the next-generation killing machine. Thus, you top me and then I will top you for topping me, and the vicious circle goes on.

The strategists and planners in Washington are also very good at creating likely scenarios based on the projection of what the Chinese would do “if I were them.” Some Pentagon generals speculate that the PLA will be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Suddenly, the mainland’s intent to invade becomes fact, and alarm bells ring and war preparations are begun. 

Portraying China as a menace is good for business

Of course, positioning China as a menacing threat is good for America’s protection business. Any country that believes in China as a threat becomes a client of the US security protection. The US has more than 800 military bases around the world and needs reasons for having them. 

On the other hand, the world is awakening to the realization that China is not posing a threat to anyone. It brokered a peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran and has have established its Belt and Road Initiative with 150 countries. Beijing does not have any military presence outside of China to speak of, unless you count a supply base in Djibouti, and it adheres to non-interference in other countries’ domestic affairs.

Even the US is rumored to have asked China to intercede on America’s behalf with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis have been firing missiles at American and Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, forcing the rerouting of ships around the Horn of Africa instead of going through the Suez Canal, causing significant economic disruption. 

Despite its bases around the world, the mighty American military is virtually helpless against the Houthi rebels of Yemen and has no influence on Iran. The Houthis, by taking on the Americans in sympathy with the Gaza Palestinians, have gained worldwide prestige and recognition. China was unable to offer the US any remedy other than that President Joe Biden must persuade Israel to enact an immediate ceasefire.

When the tiny island nation of Nauru switched diplomatic relations from Republic of China (aka Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to visit other island states in the South Pacific asking them to hold the line and not switch their diplomatic ties. In return, he promised billions of dollars to help out the governments.

‘White man can’t be trusted’

Blinken came and left, and no money followed from Washington. The heads of Palau and the Marshall Islands got impatient and wrote to Washington, first in the form of a private communication and then by public letter telling the world that the American word of honor isn’t worth very much.

At this point, the world sees the heretofore hegemon helpless before a ragtag band of rebels, hopeless in being able to stop Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza, and offering checks to tiny island nations that can’t be cashed.

What about the US economic competition with China begun by then-president Donald Trump as he tried to “make America great again,” which was continued and even accentuated by his successor, President Joe Biden?

First of all, Trump’s assertion that tariffs imposed on imports from China were “free” money for the US Treasury is, to anyone that took Economics 101, as ludicrous as it sounds. Yet Biden continued the tariff policy because he was afraid of offending those American voters dumb enough to believe in Trump’s free money. (Explaining that import tariffs actually hurt the taxpayer’s pocketbook is much more challenging.)

Biden also doubled down by providing incentives to bring back manufacturing to the US, or at least “nearshoring” it out of China to friendlier countries. To his credit, the US enjoyed a modest return of manufacturing that can be highly automated and does not depend on skilled production workers who are no longer found in America.

Indeed, a good portion of manufacturing of low-value goods did leave China, a popular destination being Vietnam. The work ethic of the Vietnamese is comparable to that in China and thus enjoyed some degree of success. But these operations depend on the supply chains well established in China, and many, in fact, are actually owned by Chinese companies that relocated to Vietnam. 

Recent trade data show that while China’s direct export to the US has declined, its export to Vietnam and Mexico has significantly increased, in step with the latter increase in exports to the US. In other words, the supply chain lengthened, and became less efficient in direct response to American trade policy.

China’s production of electric vehicles is taking over the world by storm, becoming the No 1 exporter of cars, having surpassed Japan, Germany and South Korea. To keep Chinese EVs from the American market, Biden has added a 25% import tariff on them. China’s answer is to build an assembly plant in Mexico.

Biden’s strategy to bring back semiconductor manufacturing has also been significantly underwhelming, for a number of reasons. 

As Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) discovered, when it acceded to US pressure and moved an advanced production line to Phoenix, Arizona, the skilled workers needed to build and run the technologically challenging plant were lacking. The startup date for the inaugural operation has been pushed back by at least a year.

TSMC was promised billions of dollars in subsidy for the relocated fab and it is still waiting for the money. Meanwhile, American born and bred Intel, with a much less advanced new fab to be built in the US, is slated to get its billions in a timely manner. The likelihood of TSMC being left holding the bag should surprise no one.

China’s ‘collapse’ contrary to reality

Pundits in the mainstream media chortled in delight as they witnessed the recent bankruptcy of China’s major real-estate holding companies. They extrapolated and predicted negative growth for China’s economy, even a total collapse – again. See, for instance, a particularly incisive dissection of such buffoonery.  

Yet a paper published this year by the Switzerland-based Center for Economic Policy Research declared that “China is now the world’s sole manufacturing superpower. Its industrial production exceeds that of the nine next largest manufacturers combined,” three times as big as the US and six times as big as Japan. 

As the world’s manufacturing superpower, it’s no wonder that China can easily surpass the US in the making of weapons of war as well as industrial goods.

If Western observers hadn’t been so busy belittling China’s efforts, attributing progress to IP theft and copycat, they might have realized that China’s dominance in EVs, ship building, infrastructure building and high-speed train development were inevitable, as China responded to demands of a huge and growing domestic market.

Another response to competing with China is for the Biden White House to impose sanctions and export restrictions on high technology to China, in particular restrictions on access to semiconductor technology and chips for artificial intelligence.

Based on America’s prior experience with Russia, wherein economic sanctions and embargoes backfired and gave Russia a great boost in export to the world not aligned with the US and strengthened the value of ruble to new highs, Biden surely should have considered that China is too big for any effective stranglehold.

Indeed, last September Huawei surprised the US by introducing a smartphone that rivaled the latest Apple iPhone in function using its own chip design and made by a Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) fab inside China. Huawei was denied access to the fab services of TSMC for three years but found a way around the restrictions.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way around

Finding ways around American sanctions and embargoes is inevitable and a matter of time.

China has a population four times that of the US, generates six times as many science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) graduates every year, and has a middle-class consumer market larger than the total population of the US.

With industrial capability three times that of the US and a workforce that is technologically up to date, why should America resent being surpassed economically?

In the meantime, other than arguing about building the wall on the southern border to keep out the illegal immigrants, I haven’t seen much accomplished in rebuilding the infrastructure in America. Laughing out loud, the only story I saw reported early this year was the restoration of the Hamilton Bridge across the East River in New York City.

This was actually completed in 2013 and done by a Chinese construction company based in nearby New Jersey during friendlier times.

The US is running out of munitions to send to Ukraine, and the Houthis by the Red Sea are annoying as hell, like a gnat that couldn’t be swatted. Washington is not going to have much luck persuading the Taipei government to provoke the dragon across the Taiwan Strait, and is facing diminishing prestige around the world by the day.

Asia Times’ David Goldman writes about “Saving America’s future from the blob.” I see the “blob” as a more graphic term for the neocons running amok in Washington raising tensions everywhere in the world in the name of protecting national security. The more tension they caused, the more orders for next generation weapons are placed with the military industrial complex.

Americans pay for the weapons by raising the national debt and printing more money. The day will come when everybody in the world recognizes the steadily declining value of the dollar and decides not to hold on to the greenback any more. Backed by the dubious full faith and credit of a fading America, the US will be in a world of hurt.

Goldman concludes that “we cannot stop the rise of China, but we can rise faster.” Wow, we can? 

$500 million for China-bashing

What I have seen this month is a congressional allocation of $500 million for “negative news coverage of China.” I guess one way to stop the rise is to turn every rise into a story of China’s collapse. We are the most powerful propaganda machine in the world and we can (and have) portray every story just opposite to what is actually true.

Taking more than 700 million people out of poverty can be reported as human-rights atrocity. Re-education of Uighur young people to steer them away for terrorism can be seen as slave labor. The violent destruction of property and killing of innocent bystanders by Hong Kong protesters can be described, according to Nancy Pelosi, as a “beautiful” fight for democracy and freedom.

Pulling the wool over its own eyes is how America will fly into a mountain waiting in its flightpath.

Review of documentary on Taiwan: "Invisible Nation," invisible for a reason.

Edited version of <b>Invisible for a reason</b> was posted on <a href="https://asiatimes.com/2023/11/invisible-for-a-reason/">Asia Times</a>.

I was interviewed on national podcast, "Critical Hour."  Critical_Hour_1342_seg_3.mp3

On Youtube video by Veterans for Peace, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT0IFTuzb7o&t=505s

A dear friend we have not seen for sometime invited us to attend a viewing of

“Invisible Nation,” at Stanford on Thursday evening. It was a chance to visit

with an old friend and pick up a light dinner promised by the organizers. By the

time we got there, all the bento boxes were taken. It was the first of a list of

disappointments.

Invisible Nation is billed as a documentary on Taiwan and is

beginning to be shown around America. By traditional standards of journalism, a

documentary film is supposed to inform and educate by presenting unadulterated

facts and let the viewers come to their own conclusion. “Invisible” makes a

mockery of the term of documentary. 

It is an unabashedly adulation of Tsai Ing-wen and blanket endorsement of Taiwan as a model democracy. 

The flaws of Invisible are many, mostly by calculated omissions of history and personal

information. 

The film portrays Taiwan’s history beginning with the Dutch

colonization of the island and claims that the only time one government

controlled both the mainland and Taiwan was from 1945 to 1949. The government

was the short reign of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang that reclaimed Taiwan

after the end of World War II, and ended when he had to flee from the mainland

to Taiwan. This is most misleading at best and outright lie at its worst.

<b>Koxinga, liberator of Taiwan, not in the narrative</b>

The film fails to even mention Koxinga, aka Zheng Chenggong, the end of Ming

dynasty leader who resisted the takeover of the mainland by the Manchus and

retreated to Taiwan by evicting the Dutch from the island. Zheng’s grandson

eventually surrendered to the Qing imperial court in Beijing. For centuries

thereafter, Taiwan was part of China until the Beijing government lost a sea war

to Japan and Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895. 

Invisible also does not mention the Potsdam Declaration that stipulated the terms of Japan’s unconditional

surrender, drafted by the allies, in which Japan was to hand Taiwan back to

China. Throughout the war, United States was insistent in recognizing Taiwan as

part of China. This recognition persisted when President Richard Nixon went to

China and reaffirmed by President Jimmy Carter and by every American president

ever since. 

The mockumentary did correctly attribute the actions of Lee Teng-hui

for the political turn away from the heavy-handed rule of the Nationalist

government. Lee succeeded Chiang Ching-kuo, the son of Chiang Kai-shek who led

the retreat from the mainland to Taiwan in 1949. The son took over in 1978 and

began to liberalize and loosen the control of the island. He selected Lee to be

his vice president because Lee was a Taiwan native born. 

Chiang was probably

unaware that Lee also went by his Japanese name, Iwasato Masao. In fact,

Lee/Iwasato, a native speaker of Japanese, was known to confide to visiting

dignitaries from Japan that his allegiance leaned more to Japan than to China.

In fact, his older brother was killed in action during WWII as a member of the

Japanese imperial army and his name is enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo

among other war dead and some convicted war criminals. 

After WWII, there were

many Japanese that remained in Taiwan. They took on Chinese surnames and merged

into the local society. The question of divided loyalty and the influence of an

estimated hundred thousand Japanese that stayed along with their descendants on

Taiwan’s politics has not been studied.

<b>A Bian not in the narrative either</b>

In the case of Lee, after he assume the leadership of the Taiwan government, he

gradually undermined and weakened the KMT organization that paved the way for

Taiwan to elect its first president from the KMT opposition, the Democratic

Progressive Party, thus ending KMT’s 55 years of continuous rule. Somehow, the

name of Chen Shui-bian that should have figured prominently in the documentary

was not mentioned even once in Invisible. 

Chen Shui-bian not only became the

first president from DPP, he cleverly manipulated and divided the opposition and

became the only president to win with less than 40% of the votes. He also became

the first Taiwan president to be immediately imprisoned for wanton corruption at

the end of his term of office. He was the kind of president that would give any

democracy a bad name and one can hardly blame the director of the documentary

for leaving Chen out of her story. 

Aside from being a blot on Taiwan’s modern

history, Chen ordered a consequential rewrite of school children’s history

textbooks. Obliterated in the revised textbooks was any reference of Taiwan’s

linkage to China’s history, culture and ethnic origin. 

A generation of young

Taiwanese people grew up not knowing that their ancestors did not spring out of

the ground but came across the Taiwan strait from southern Fujian for many

generations. That the Taiwan dialect sounds almost exactly the same as Minnan

dialect off southern Fujian. That if they had a chance to study Chinese history,

they would know that as early as the Han dynasty around 200 BCE, the mainland

already knew about the island offshore. 

Small wonder that the generation of

young hotheads, that spearheaded the sunflower protest, screamed for freedom but

did not appreciate Taiwan’s economic dependence on trade with the mainland.

Every year, Taiwan’s trade surplus with mainland more than offset the entire

trade deficit with the rest of the world. The is a consequence of Beijing’s

deliberate policy to give Taiwan special preference. 

The sunflower protesters

were not as violent as the Hong Kong protesters of 2019 but they nevertheless

destroyed public property, invaded the government parliament, and insulted

publicly elected officials. All of which was recorded in the mockumentary. But

since it was in the name of fighting for democracy, what’s the big deal of

breaking a few laws along the way? 

Of course, not all Taiwan’s youth are

lunkheads. The intelligent, high achievers understand that their future lies

with the fast-growing mainland economy. Many live on the mainland and are

working for Taiwan companies located in China. Some are even working for locally

owned companies in China. The sunflower children may not care about economy,

jobs and a career. But the serious-minded young people do.

<b>A progressive image of DPP</b>

The film naturally featured many remarks and speeches by Tsai Ing-wen, the

current president of Taiwan. Other talking heads include her admirers and

followers, even transgender cabinet ministers. The film brag that Taiwan was the

first in Asia to recognize same sex marriage and protect the rights of the

LGBTQ. Certainly, a show of progressive mindset that is even steps ahead of the

U.S. 

The film also included a clip of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drop in visit

to Taiwan, against all advice but to the thrill of Tsai and the DPP. The most

powerful woman in Washington meeting with Taiwan’s first woman president. Could

not have gotten any better than this. Thank goodness, Invisible did not include

the video of Tsai bestowing a beauty pageant sash on Pelosi. Also not included

was any discussion on how Pelosi having stepped on the red line, greatly raised

the cross-strait tension and prompted threatening hostile reaction from the PLA.

But there were a lot of folks the film could have interviewed but did not. They

could have interviewed the Taiwanese living and working on the mainland on their

perspective of the cross-strait relations. They could have interviewed the vast

majority of the people on Taiwan that prefer the status quo, neither for

unification or independence. 

They could have asked the persons on the street on

what they thought of the relations with Uncle Sam: Will the US really come to

fight alongside the troops of Taiwan? How do they feel about Washington forcing

the Tsai government to buy old outdated weapons? How do they feel about being

forced to buy tainted pork from American farmers? What do they think of Biden’s

strong arming Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing into moving their advanced chip

fabs to Arizona, and then run into unforeseen labor problem, cost overrun, and

construction delays? Has Biden shown any respect for Taiwan’s “sovereignty?”

Taiwan is an invisible nation for a simple reason. Taiwan is not a nation but a

province of China. Simple as that.

Discussion of the Hamas Israeli War

The YouTube discussion can be found on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAmF7Sgsmv4

Biden’s contrasting styles and priorities - The Biden administration has concentrated virtually all its efforts on keeping China from rising, to no avail

I celebrated my 85th birthday by writing this piece for Asia Times. For weeks, US President Joe Biden publicly demanded that the issue of raising the debt ceiling was a done deal and not negotiable. As the prospects of national default loomed, the Biden White House quietly began negotiations with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and arrived at a compromise in the nick of time so as to avert default. It seems Biden understood, after all, that avoiding the disaster of a default and the mortal pain on the American economy was more important than sticking by his guns. However, he apparently does not understand that the outcome of his negotiations with China is equally crucial to America’s future; his approach has been steadily unyielding, unfriendly and unhelpful. Biden’s China team has adopted a strategy of saying one thing and then doing just the opposite. Every one of his cabinet officers would declare that he or she wishes to meet with their Chinese counterparts to discuss cooperation and collaboration – but always on the US terms, meaning that the US reserves the right to discuss the issues it wants to discuss, but will continue to criticize, attack and sanction China on others. This is the way an imperious hegemonic power acts toward a subordinate country and expects obeisance and compliance. Except China no longer sees itself as a lesser power to the US. China has simply ignored the many White House requests. The latest example came at the Shangri-La security forum in Singapore. The US had asked for a meeting between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his counterpart Li Shangfu on the sidelines of the forum. China refused. The US promptly accused China of irresponsible behavior endangering the bilateral relations by not keeping the lines of communication open. US wants to meet with China for what purpose? Of course, communicating and agreeing to face-to-face meetings are two separate matters. China expects prospects of a useful outcome to justify arranging in-person meetings. For possible constructive results, China wants to see serious and sincere gestures from the US. All too frequently in previous meetings, the American officials viewed them as opportunities to crow about China giving in to American demands, whether actually true or not. That Biden did not even bother to lift the personal sanction imposed on Li Shangfu during Donald Trump’s administration and still expects to have a summit meeting of military leaders seems stupid and arrogant. Mind you, Li was sanctioned for purchasing fighter jets from Russia on behalf of China as part of his duty at the time in charge of procurement for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). What right does the US have to sanction an official of another country for doing his job? India buys arms from Russia; Turkey buys arms from Russia, apparently with no sanctions. This is just one example of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s “rules-based international order.” That order is arbitrary and is whatever the US says it is. Blinken was hankering for an invitation to meet in Beijing. Then the wandering weather balloon from China gave him the excuse to cancel the visit on an invitation that never came. Not only that, he reaped a PR dividend by blaming China for the debacle. Examples of hypocrisy and deception abound. Biden warmly embraced Xi Jinping in Bali and swore by the one-China principle and that Taiwan is part of China. Then he openly sells arms to Taiwan and impose complete sanctions of export semiconductor technology to China. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen goes out of her way to ask China for support of the US treasury debt and then goes to Africa to warn African nations to beware of China’s debt-trap diplomacy. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo asked for a meeting with her counterpart to discuss increasing bilateral trade. What she actually meant was she wanted China to buy more but did absolutely nothing to reduce the tariffs imposed on Chinese imports by the Trump administration that might actually raise the volume of bilateral trade. US on the path of self-destruction Decoupling from China is not his intention, Biden claims, but then every action by his team is just the opposite. Every prospective bilateral outcome has to be on US terms, or else. What the Biden White House does not appreciate is that it has embarked on a path of self-destruction for America. The damaging blowback from Biden’s China policy may not be as obvious as not raising the debt ceiling, but there is a strong element of cutting off Uncle Sam’s nose to spite his face that the leaders in Washington seem oblivious to. Just a few examples follow. When Biden first came to office, if he had intended to resume a constructive relationship with China, he could have eliminated the tariffs levied by Trump on Chinese imports. Instead, he retained the tariffs despite hurting the American consumer much more severely than China’s manufacturers. The desire to inflict pain on China far outweighed protecting Americans from even greater pain. Whether it’s assembling new subway cars with Chinese components, installing the world’s most cost-effective port-handling cranes, or surveillance cameras made in China, Washington let its paranoia run wild and turned away the cost savings from buying superior products from China. The sanction of Huawei is an extreme case. Huawei has developed the world’s most advanced fifth-generation (5G) telecommunication system, which has received acceptance around the world. Because of US fear of being spied upon, Washington not only has refused to buy from Huawei but pressured many of its allies to rip out billions of dollars’ worth of Huawei equipment already installed. After enduring the US sanctions for three years, Huawei has just announced the complete replacement of operating software based on Western technology. It will now sell to the world without any constraints, while the United States’ allies suffer hundreds of billions of dollars from the teardown of already installed Huawei equipment and the huge opportunity costs 0f not having a state-of-the-art telecommunication system. China has also surpassed the US in EVs Of course, telecom is not the only technology where China has surpassed the US. Among others, China’s emergence as the world’s leading producer of electric vehicles and owner of leading technology for the batteries that go into the EVs has taken the West by surprise. China has become the No 1 exporter of EVs around the world. Ford and Tesla, among many automakers in the West, would like CATL to build an advanced battery plant next to their EV plants in the US. (CATL is abbreviation for Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd headquartered in Ningde, China, and is an acknowledged leader in EV battery technology.) The potential deals raise interesting questions. Will Beijing forbid CATL’s transfer of battery technology to the US along the same logic as Washington’s semiconductor sanction on China? Or will some senator, such as a Marco Rubio, raise the specter of Chinese batteries in EVs forming a terrifying network for spying on America? Biden thought he had cleverly jumpstarted the US semiconductor industry by snatching a leading-edge operation from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to Phoenix, Arizona. Now the TSMC management has discovered that they are not able to hire enough people from an American workforce that are qualified and/or willing to work in the rigors of a Taiwanese operation. In the meantime, the people of Taiwan are feeling increasing betrayed by America’s ham-fisted ways. This is a classic lose-lose outcome in the making. Another is Defense Secretary Austin’s insistence on playing the “freedom of navigation” game in waters around China and flying surveillance planes off coastal China. Since Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei last year, China has emphasized its territorial claim over Taiwan and has been increasingly aggressive in responding to American intrusions in Beijing’s back yard. Just last Saturday, a US destroyer along with a trailing Canadian frigate attempted to sail through the Taiwan Strait, which China regards as its territorial waters. In response to this provocation, a Chinese destroyer intercepted the American warship and forced it to change course. Obviously, the PLA is increasingly willing for a showdown over whether China’s territorial waters can continue to be treated as America’s international waters. The firepower and technology of the PLA warships have surpassed the Americans’, and the Chinese appear confident and ready to put it to a test. If the US Navy should succeed in provoking the PLA into a firefight, it is certain that both parties would be losers. China has more friends than US has allies Geopolitically, the US continues to count on the Group of Seven and a handful of other countries to be its allies. Biden’s stipulation is to insist on strict compliance of his foreign policy even at the expense of each ally’s own national interest. Consequently, France is becoming a doubting Thomas about the wisdom of going along with the US, South Korea is trying to wriggle out of not losing China’s sales, as is ASML of the Netherlands. Germany and Australia in their own ways are holding on to their trade relations with China. In sum, the American alliance is increasingly questioning the shakiness of US leadership. Concurrent to American hectoring over its version of “rule-based” order, 19 countries have expressed interest in joining BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) purely for the economic advantages of being a body that requires no military allegiance. Saudi Arabia along with other oil-producing countries becoming members of BRICS+ will change the global alignment. The body will be far more populous and economically powerful than the US-aligned G7+. And, by the way, a top agenda item for the new BRICS is to discuss a plan to introduce a new currency to replace the need to settle trade accounts in US dollars. This move is in direct response to Biden weaponizing the dollar and denying dollar access to countries he doesn’t like, such as Russia. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) has just come into full force. Members of the partnership consist of the 10 ASEAN countries plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. They will enjoy booming, tariff-free trade among themselves. The US is on the outside looking in. Since China initiated the Belt and Road Initiative 10 years ago, around 150 countries have become beneficiaries of projects and investments through BRI. At reasonable financing terms, China supplies their expertise to build infrastructure such as ports, railroad, highways, bridges, airports and many others to enhance the economic development of the recipient country. By far, BRI has been China’s most effective tool for making friends around the world. The US? It stands impotently on the sidelines and watches with envy, and occasionally throws stones by calling these BRI projects debt traps. Despite Washington’s mighty effort to suppress and obstruct China’s rise, China has become relatively impervious to American sanctions and restrictions. Just like Huawei, China’s semiconductor industry will find ways around the ban. At the same time, China has become the foremost trading partner to virtually every country in the world. China’s economy remains strong and technological innovations will continue, hardly affected by actions from Washington. The Biden administration has concentrated virtually all its efforts on keeping China from rising, to no avail. At the same time, the administration has not done anything concrete to lift the competitiveness of the American economy. In a long line of mediocre leadership, Biden may prove the be the worst.

What does it mean when India overtakes China? There is more to becoming a world power than sheer numbers

First posted on Asia Times. As India is about to overtake China to become the most populous in the world, The New York Times promises a future series of articles speculating on how India might change the world as China has in the last 40-plus years. I am certain that India being the largest democracy in the world will be mentioned ad nauseam, but other considerations might be overlooked. I would like to provide a broader framework in the interest of a comprehensive discussion. As my teacher and good friend Martin Jacques has repeatedly argued, China is a civilization state unlike any nation as defined by the West. India can also be considered a civilization state, but with major differences. In the 3rd century BCE, China had a brutal and cruel leader with a vision that united all seven warring states. Qin Shi Huang became China’s first emperor. He standardized the spoken and written language, the currency, the weight and other measures and even the width of the wagon axles on the roads. He wanted to live forever, but at least his legacy survived. A national identity Most important, the first emperor established a national identity for all the ethnic peoples living in China. In time, these people responded to the Chinese culture and assimilated into the Chinese way of life, gradually discarding their own original heritage. Today, we say China is made up of nearly 92% ethnic Han, the remainder being 50-some other identifiable minorities. Actually, the Han Chinese are made up of a mixed gene pool of many other tribes that have faded into history. There is no “purebred Chinese” per se. Missing in India’s history is that one strong unifying figure to rally the disparate groups of people and establish a national identify. India still recognizes 16 official languages along with other unofficial ones, and people many cannot communicate with another. Contrary to popular impression, only 10% of the population can speak English. The closest to a national identity is the one imposed by the British rule on the Indian subcontinent for nearly 100 years between the 19th and 20th centuries. The Brits, of course, were not there to construct an Indian identity. They were there to exploit, colonize and enslave the indigenous people. Consequently, Indians today have a much weaker sense of who they are as compared with the Chinese. It’s harder for them to know their ethnicity, other than the idea of attaining the mythical stature of a white Aryan as nirvana. India continues to be hobbled by the caste system, a legacy of its culture. This means that by virtue of their parentage, more than 300 million Indians will be socially stigmatized and economically marginalized with no hope of realizing their potential. Their children and grandchildren suffer the same fate. Caste system is India’s worst obstacle Another reflection from the mindset of the caste system is that India’s elite schools are reserved for the privileged few. Quality of the non-elite universities is not high. Most, especially women, cannot get into India’s better schools for lack of seats. China has about four times as many universities as India, and some have been placed among the world’s top 100 institutions of higher learning. Functional literacy is over 90% in China and about 60% in India. In Chinese culture, education is life’s highest priority. The difference in the two countries’ systems of government is one the West loves to extol. India is the world’s largest democracy, while China is not a (Western style) democracy. What is that supposed to mean? From my perspective, India is constrained by all the limitations of a Western democracy. The government talks a lot but does not get much done. Corruption is rife at every level. The poor are condemned to stay poor. Come to think of it, it reminds me of another democracy, the United States. However, given its huge population, India can boast about its relatively small group of brilliant and talented people, those who are fortunate enough to have realized their full potential. One obvious example is the corps of business executives originally from India who are dominating corporate America. For India to realize its full potential as a nation, it needs to stop seeing itself as an Anglo-Saxon country, and join the Global South to contribute to the wealth and well-being of the coalition of people of color. India needs to raise the quality of higher education and open access to every citizen. Only by allowing every person the opportunity to realize his or her full potential can India become another emerging pillar of technology and industry. To create jobs for the growing body of educated youth, India needs to attract foreign investment. This means less red tape and a total absence of corruption, and, of course, prompt completion of infrastructure projects. Lessons from China Contrary to the Western idea that conflict is the way to peace, India should proactively approach China to resolve their border dispute. So silly to argue over a Line of Control drawn by a Brit more than a century ago (the McMahon Line). For India truly to overtake China and become a new emerging world leader, it would need to learn two essential lessons from China. One lesson, relatively easy to do, is to greatly improve the quality of education and boost the quantity of the workforce. The government then would have to eliminate corruption at every level and bureaucratic red tape to make foreign direct investment easy and attractive. FDI creates jobs and raises GDP. The second lesson, much more challenging, is to launch a cultural revolution on a scale that surpasses even the one in China, but with a constructive end-point rather than a destructive one. The objective of an Indian revolution is to truly eliminate caste, liberate women, and give all the opportunity to realize their potential.

China's version of democracy

As told by mayors of four cities in China. Hi All, My friend and colleague, K.J. Noh has introduced us to how China governs vs. the US system. The program from China interviewed mayors of 4 cities located in central China, coastal city in south China, northeast of China and Tibet. I have added an annotation for each city. I am passing this around because our government is spending millions of dollars to spread false information on China for no other reason than to justify making an enemy out of China. Please share this bi-lingual YouTube program to your circle of friends and neighbors. We can do our little bit to reverse the anti-China sentiment. Best, George On Tue, Apr 4, 2023 at 11:38 PM kiji noh wrote: This fascinating, inspiring documentary about Chinese mayors gives us insight into Chinese governance, public policy, accountability and what it means to "serve the people". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEM903DsC5U (1:46:00) Watch this film and you can see why China is constantly getting better. Why the Government has 90+% popularity. It's the quality of its leadership and the mechanisms for making it better. The documentary takes us to 4 different cities/prefectures: Hefei, Yanbian, Zhangzhou, Nagqu, and then has a synoptic discussion about China's whole process democracy. Along the way, we see people, policies, economies, as well as the beautiful nature and the distinct indigenous cultures of each region (At 35:20 you can see the sacrifices) If you prefer to watch in shorter episodes: Ep1: Hefei City, Anhui: Innovation, Environment, Employment (19:26) The city invests in innovation and the environment for the betterment of the peoples' livelihood. The political leaders dispenses fund to help the city and do not need to collect funds for their political campaigns. Ep2: Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin: Soccer, Farming, Farmer's dance (14:30) This city promotes local sports participation, people vote for officials that have done the most for the people, Ethnic Korean mayor took a salary cut to enter local politics and he actively promotes preservation of Korean culture and dance Ep3: Zhangzhou City, Fujian: Buildings, Business, Beaches (25:35) Mayor helps residents preserve and restore world heritage & famous roundhouses; 87 year old Taiwanese owner of major tea company won't retire, being successful is too much fun, facilitated by the mayor ensuring that the Taiwanese investors are pleased to be in Zhangzhou. (A majority of Taiwanese ancestors originated from Zhangzhou.) Ep4: Nagqu, Tibet Autonomous Region: Caring for Vulnerable Nature & People (25:57) Young Tibetan mayor modestly admits he's very much learning on the job. Ep5: Chinese Democracy vs. American Democracy: "promises vs performance" (12:32) This episode is pretty much self explanatory. As one mayor explained, we are products of democracy every step along the way, who has ever heard of someone getting elected to a high level office without showing any proven experience at every lower level of office? Promotion is based on past performances. In every city in China,12345 is the direct line to the mayor's office. Ep6: Delivering Democracy: people oriented democracy (4:34) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw5Rbt38mCs Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMFzi7GN4-U

Contrasting styles of global leadership

A shorter version of this commentary was first posted in Asia Times. Early this January, I opined in Asia Times that “2023 bodes poorly for US international relations” under US President Joe Biden. I based my conclusion on China’s impressive success in making new friends vs. the Biden administration’s inability to make any. In less than three months since then, developments around the world have been seismic and spectacular and have made a prophet out of me, if I do say so myself. In January, I reported that China President Xi Jinping received the red-carpet treatment from Saudi Arabia, concluded a $25 billion deal for oil and met with the six Middle East nations that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council. Hosted by Saudi, they talked about China buying energy and helping them build their infrastructure. Two years earlier, China entered a 25-year strategic cooperation agreement with Iran. Thus, China has become friends of both major sects of Islam that have been historically bitter rivals. (To be honest, I did not expect anything earthshaking out of all this.) Then earlier this March, China announced that after four days of meeting and discussion in Beijing, Saudi Arabia and Iran have agree to resume diplomatic relations. A peace deal for the ages This was a big deal and caught the world by surprise. Heretofore, Saudi representing the Sunnis while Iran the Shiites have been bitter sectarian foes for centuries. Yet, China was able to play the role of an honest broker and brought the two sides together. China has the right set of credentials to be a mediator for peace. China is the second strongest global power, but does not try to bully any lesser countries and seeks to get along with everyone. China emphasizes three principles in their international relations: respect the national sovereignty of the other, does not interfere with the internal affairs of the other, and seek joint development based on common interests and mutual benefits. A few days later, Xi called on his “good friend,” Russia President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and brought with him a 12-point peace plan to resolve the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The west promptly labeled the peace plan as vague, ambiguous and did not include terms that would revert Russian occupied territories back to Ukraine. But the west missed the point that was clear to everybody else in the world. Namely, a true mediation for peace does not begin by stipulating what the outcome should look like. That is up to the outcome of negotiations by the two principals. Zelensky would like China to step in But as pointed out in Asia Times, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky may find China’s peace proposal an acceptable starting point. He is facing western allies getting weary of supporting the war. Without such support, Zelensky knows his goose is cooked. While Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida was visiting Kiev acting as Washington’s envoy to encourage keeping the war going, Zelensky publicly welcomed China’s participation to broker a peace deal. He obviously found comfort in China’s ability to bring peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran. While Xi Jinping is enhancing his stature as a world leader that is proactive for peace, what has happened to Joe Biden during the same period? History will show that blowback from two of Biden’s worst decisions ever made has come to haunt him in the first quarter of 2023. In 2022, Biden imposed economic sanctions and confiscated all the Russian dollar holdings held in the US in an attempt to bring Russia to its knees. But it didn’t work. Russia’s economy turned out to be far more resilient than Washington expected. Weaponizing the dollar is a big blunder Barred from trade with the EU and others in the west, Russia turned to trade with China, India, East Asia and global south. Trade with China will surpass $200 billion this year and Russia has agreed to accept China’s renminbi to settle their transactions. As Russia earn a bounty of yuan from energy sales to China, other countries see the advantage of accepting the yuan from Russia for their trade, thus avoiding the extra cost of having to convert their own currency into dollars. Since China is likely to be their most important trading partner, yuan from Russia can simply be used when they do business with China. Brazil is the latest major trading nation to announce acceptance of the yuan to settle their accounts with China. These developments are not sufficient to dislodge the dollar as the global reserve currency but do indicate that other nations are eager to by-pass the dollar. By weaponizing the dollar, Biden has succeeded in planting the idea in other central banks that the dollar is no longer a reliable reserve currency. Recently, ASEAN countries held a meeting to discuss ways to avoid using the dollar, euro or yen to settle their trade accounts. If not those, what then? Probably China’s yuan and their own currencies. Indeed, China and even Japan have been reducing their dollar holdings. In recent months, China and Russia have been the major buyers of gold, no doubt with the dollars they held. The recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank is an indicator that the US economy is caught between the rock and a hard place. To tamp down inflation, the Fed has to raise the interest rate. Rising interest rate means a decreasing value of the long-term treasury bonds that the bank bought that pay lower interest rates. Thus, the decline in the value of the collateral asset owned by SVB made the bank vulnerable to a bank run. Most American banks operated in much the same way as SVB but were more fortunate because the Treasury department quickly stepped in and injected liquidity to reassure depositors that their banks won’t go the way of SVB. American economy needs China’s help To use a Chinese expression, Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo have been acting like ants running around a hot griddle, wanting and waiting for an invitation to visit Beijing. Why? Because Yellen wants to urge China to continue buying American IOUs and Raimondo would like to raise the level of bilateral trade, which would help keep the US economy going. Somehow, these Biden cabinet officers do not know how to ask nicely nor diplomatically. They seem to assume that a public announcement of their wish is good enough for Beijing to express mail an invitation to their offices. It has not occurred to them that Beijing needs to know what’s in it for China to meet with them. The Biden administration has the arrogance to presume that they can pick and choose the economic sectors that they can decouple from China and which to select for collaboration with China. Apparently, Biden does not understand that China does not see itself as a vassal state but has its own priorities. Decouple is a two-way street. Both Testa and Ford have asked Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd. to build a battery plant in the US. CATL is the world leader in lithium battery technology and dominant supplier to makers of electric vehicles. China may well deny CATL an export license to locate a plant in the US for fear that the US would commandeer its world leading, proprietary technology, just as Biden has done in shipping advanced fab belonging to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing from Taiwan to Arizona. Obviously there exists a huge deficit of trust between the US and China. Nothing Biden has done is in the direction of healing the rift. Blowing up Nord Stream is the other blunder The revelation by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh that Biden ordered the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines has further emphasized that Biden is an unethical and ruthless national leader that cannot be trusted. Biden has shown that he has no qualms in committing a war crime by severing the key economic linkage between Russia and the EU. Cutting off cheap energy from Russia has wreaked economic turmoil on his European allies. That Biden would do this to his own allies will shake EU allies’ trust and confidence in the US for years to come. As matters stand now, Xi Jinping represents a proactive world leader that will use his influence and prestige to work for world peace. Despite all the slander heaped on him and the blackening of China by Washington and the western media, a long queue of world leaders are jostling to meet with him in Beijing to discuss economic cooperation and collaboration on world peace. At the other end of the world is Joe Biden, a world leader that is dishonest and unethical and has earned the wary distrust of virtually every national leader in the world. He gives lip service to peace while creating conflict and intimidating smaller countries to join the US military alliance and prepare to “volunteer” in Washington’s proxy wars. Even his closest ally has to watch its back lest it’s abruptly discarded when it no longer figures in the US national interest. If, nay when the world majority chooses peace over war, then there would be no need for any country to depend on American military protection for security—a protection often promised but seldom delivered.

Trust deficit of US has been self-inflicted

First published in China Daily. In the United States, we have a popular saying: "You can't have your cake and eat it too", which is another way of saying that you cannot have it both ways. Yet this is exactly what President Joe Biden's administration is trying to do with China. It treats China like a bitter adversary. The Biden administration even has hundreds of millions of dollars allocated to encourage Western media to blacken China's reputation at every opportunity, even resorting to distortion and fabrication to achieve their objective. Yet when they need China's help, Biden expects Beijing to comply and act as a willing supporter. Some recent examples come to mind. At the G20 Summit in Bali in October, Biden reaffirmed the one-China principle and said he would do nothing to interfere with Taiwan as part of China. Of course, right after he left Bali, he ordered advanced weapons for Taiwan and commandeered part of Taiwan Semiconductor Co from the island's city of Hsinchu to the US state of Arizona. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen flew to Switzerland specifically to intercept China's then vice-premier Liu He on his way to Davos. She asked for China's support for the dollar by continuing to buy US Treasury IOUs. She then flew on to Africa to warn African nations of China's so-called debt-trap diplomacy — without any evidence whatsoever. On the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese senior diplomat Wang Yi, boasting later that he gave a stern warning that China must not give weapons to Russia, or it would face dire consequences. Wang, who is now a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee, let it be known that the shooting down by the US of a weather balloon that wandered into US airspace was a hysterical response. Hysteria and paranoid logic run wild in Washington. Kits for new subway cars provided by China and assembled in the US were feared to be a vehicle for spying. The ubiquitous TikTok may be thrown out of the US because it is owned by a Chinese entrepreneur. The US has concluded that the best way to deal with its rotting infrastructure, proliferating number of homeless people, drug overdoses and mass shootings is to kick the can down the road and let the next round of politicians face the challenges. In the meantime, rather than confronting the real challenges at home, they work on blaming everything on China. At the beginning of his administration, Biden could have reset relations with China, but he doubled down instead. Blinken and others have gone around promising positive relations with every country, only to stab them in the back. This has been especially true with their dealings with China. Right now, Biden desperately needs to meet with President Xi Jinping to get China's support for the US debt, but he thinks he can get that support while trashing China and freezing China from access to semiconductor technology. Under his leadership, the US has become a nation that inflicts self-harm by a thousand cuts. By unilaterally destroying Iraq and Libya, the US instilled fear in others. By unilaterally confiscating foreign reserves belonging to Afghanistan and Russia, Biden behaved like the mafia. All the world can now see that holding on to the dollar and keeping it in the US is fraught with danger. Under these circumstances, why would China want to buy more Treasury bills? That would only enable the Federal Reserve to print more dollars and run up the deficit. In fact, China is converting extra dollars into gold and spending the remainder as rapidly as possible. China is also working with Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing states to accept the renminbi instead of the petrodollar. More than 100 countries that trade with China are already willing to hold renminbi as part of their reserve currency. All are motivated to avoid owning dollars. The US under Biden's leadership now suffers a huge credibility gap and trust deficit with the rest of the world. The US economy and therefore American taxpayers will pay dearly from the debt trap of Biden's own making. The author, a US citizen of Chinese ancestry and a retired international business adviser, wrote this commentary especially for China Daily.

My comment on role of China as a world peacemaker

George Koo on the Historic Significance of the Xi-Putin Summit & impact on changing New World Order https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ew1Va54KB8 Video cast on Activist News Network.

China on cooperation and collaboration

This is China Daily's video of the Zoom interview. China's science, tech collaboration a big plus for world - World - Chinadaily.com.cn

Nord Stream Explosions Hard to Cover-Up, Award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has exposed the Biden administration’s role in sabotaging the pipelines

First posted on Asia Times. The report “How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline” by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh states beyond any reasonable doubt that US President Joe Biden ordered the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Thus if it wasn’t clear before, it is emphatically clear now that the US will impose its proprietary version of “rules-based international order” by any means possible including committing a crime against humanity. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines are jointly owned by the Russian energy corporation Gazprom and four European energy companies. Nord Stream 1 had been providing low-cost natural gas from Russia to Germany, which redistributed some of it to other parts of Europe. Nord Stream 2 was in the process of coming on stream and would have doubled the supply to Europe. The explosions that took place on September 26, 2022, stopped the flow of Russian gas, and left hundreds of millions of Europeans facing the prospects of a cold winter. The economic consequences of the Nord Stream sabotage were the quadrupling of energy costs and triggering rampant inflation in Europe the likes of which hadn’t been seen for decades. President Biden wanted to make sure that Germany would strongly support Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. Blowing up the pipelines would ensure that Russia could no longer supply cheap energy to Europe and Germany wouldn’t have natural gas from Russia as a source of distraction from its support for Ukraine. Biden had absolutely no justification for destroying property that did not belong to the US. Doing so would be naked aggression, an act of war, devoid of concern that the people and economies of friendly allies would suffer. He wouldn’t care that to achieve his sense of security for the US required committing a war crime. Heretofore, we Americans have been telling the world that the United States of America is the citadel on top of the hill, a shining beacon of integrity and an example of what a freedom-loving democracy should be. Other nations are supposed to admire what we stand for and aspire to be just like us. Shining beacon no more Now, the world sees that Fortress America is corrupt, dishonest and shameless. The US suppresses other countries by force, intimidation or sanctions or a mixture of the above. Other nations comply with our demands not because they admire us but because they fear us. If the US did indeed destroy the pipelines as Hersh reports, some in the inner circle of the Biden administration might try to defend its action by claiming that it was a reprisal for Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. In fact, according to Hersh, planning to blow up the pipelines was under way months before the Russian invasion began. He further explained that the government of Norway was enlisted to help with the execution of the sabotage. One of the reasons for recruiting Norway was that it knew the shallow waters of the Baltic Sea better than anyone. “On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy,” Hersh reports. “The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission.” Norway’s participation is full of irony. The annual winner of the Nobel Peace Prize is selected by a committee appointed by the Norwegian parliament. One year, they rushed to give Peace Prize to incoming American president Barack Obama even before he assumed office. History will credit Obama as the president who first popularized the use of drones as deadly killing machines, cold-blooded and indiscriminate. They were deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. In hindsight, these were not exactly the kind of credentials consistent with those of a Peace Prize laureate. In a podcast interview subsequent to his exposé of the Nord Stream explosion, Hersh said that putting the story together was not difficult. Any reasonably competent investigative reporter could have followed the trail of telltale clues leading directly to the White House. For months before the invasion of Ukraine and the explosion of the pipelines, President Biden and his foreign-policy team – national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Victoria Nuland, the undersecretary of state for policy – had been vocal and consistent in their hostility to the two pipelines. Biden gave the secret away Biden and Nuland even publicly hinted to the media that the pipelines would “go away.” At the press briefing that followed German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’ visit to Washington in February last year, Biden said, “If Russia invades … there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Undersecretary Nuland also said at a State Department briefing, lightly covered by the media, “I want to be very clear to you today. If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The reason the mainstream media did not bother to ask the obvious question as to who blew up the pipelines and why was either being lazy and uninquisitive or because they knew the answer and did not want to embarrass the Biden White House. Even after the publication of Hersh’s report, mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Post and The New York Times did not even bother to contact him and interview him. By deliberately ignoring this story, they are not living up to their obligation as members of the fourth estate and protecting their integrity. In other words, they have betrayed public trust and sold out to the White House. The US has always acted above the laws of other sovereign nations, even ignoring the laws of the United Nations. With compliant and docile media, the Biden team can go wild and run roughshod over anyone without a tinge of concern. The worldwide disrespect for the US will grow. In time, The US will find itself alone and friendless in a unipolar world of its own lonesome.

Much ado about a well-timed balloon. Aside from a propaganda boon for the US, the incident got Antony Blinken off the hook

First posted in Asia Times. A huge white balloon equivalent in size to three buses drifted from China over Alaska and Canada, and then over Montana and across the US continent before reaching the Carolinas coast. At that point, the Pentagon deemed it safe to send a couple of jet fighters supported by a fuel tanker to bring down the errant balloon and let the remnants fall into the Atlantic Ocean. After firing missiles at the target, the mission was completed and deemed a triumphant success. And the brave pilots returned to home base safely. The Biden White House first knew about the balloon on January 28 and shot it down a week later. In between, Washington expressed outrage, fear and anxiety over the “invasion” of a spy balloon from China. Beijing’s official response was that it was a civilian balloon for weather surveillance that went off course and hardly warranted the extreme response of a missile attack. Beijing did not feel it necessary to point out that high-flying balloons cannot gather intelligence as effectively as satellites or aircraft. The Pentagon certainly knows this better than anyone. It has been flying surveillance planes off the coast of China for years – though no balloons that we know of. Needless to say, a highly visible white finish is hardly appropriate for a spy balloon that would logically want to be stealthy. But it is, on the other hand, a well-known fact that thousands of weather balloons are released annually by many countries for the purpose of forecasting weather. Once in a while, a balloon will drift off course because of atmospheric conditions, which is not surprising and should not trigger any outpouring of emotional trauma. Aside from the fact that the wandering balloon gave Washington the opportunity to make a mountain of propaganda against China’s “aggressiveness” molehill, otherwise known as xiaotidazhuo (小题大做), the incident also got Secretary of State Antony Blinken off the hook. For weeks, Blinken has publicly announced his intention to visit Beijing. Then he got specific and set the dates of his visit as February 5 and 6. This presented China’s Foreign Ministry with a thorny problem. Aside from not having extended a formal invitation, the Chinese didn’t know what to talk to Blinken about. China has experienced a litany of the US saying one thing and doing just the opposite. A trust deficit exists that can’t be papered over. At the Group of Twenty Summit in Bali in November, US President Joe Biden promised to abide by the one-China principle, and then promptly enacted a bill to provide $10 billion worth of advanced weapons to Taiwan and celebrated the hijacking of a TSMC fab to Arizona. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen flew to Switzerland to meet with Vice-Premier Liu He, China’s economic czar, to ask for China’s support of American debt and not to divest US Treasury notes and bills that China was holding. Then she flew to Africa to badmouth China and warn Africans of Chinese “debt trap” diplomacy. Since Blinken’s ill-fated first meeting with Chinese leaders in charge of foreign policy, in Anchorage, Alaska, in March 2021, he has not altered his style of diplomacy. It’s “here are my list of demands and expectations in advance and now let’s talk.” China’s style of diplomacy is more nuanced, and telling Blinken to go hell or even to go Tianjin is just not its way. Instead, an innocently wandering balloon gives Blinken a face-saving way to postpone the self-invited visit to China. Note, he didn’t say he is canceling the visit, just postponing the trip. Despite his harsh, blunt approach, he does understand that the US desperately needs China’s willing collaboration. With China, he needs to act like he understands it can’t be all take and no give. A note added after the post: Should a real war break out between the U.S. and China, we can expect an armada of ten thousand weather balloons menacing the American sky. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uOYG_n_ypPACqo8vAQNjInmP1XAeeYYb/view