Beijing Sees Trump’s Hand and Won’t Fold
Pepe Escobar • May 30, 2020
Stranger things have happened.
Everyone
was expecting US President Donald Trump to go nuclear by de facto
sanctioning China to death over Hong Kong. In an environment where
Twitter and the President of the United States are now engaged in open
warfare, the rule is that there are no rules anymore.
So in the end, what was announced against China amounted to an anti-climax.
The
US government, as it stands, is terminating its relationship with the
World Health Organization
(WHO). The geopolitical repercussions are
immense and that will take time to sink in. In the short term, something
must be blamed for the US’ appalling Covid-19 record, so it might as
well be a UN institution.
Hong Kong’s preferential trade status will also be terminated, but in a hazy future in still undetermined terms.
Phase
1 of the US-China trade deal still stands – at least for now. Yet
there’s no guarantee that Beijing itself won’t start to doubt it.
The
bottom line: “Investors” were duly appeased, for now. Team Trump seems
not to be exactly versed in the niceties of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, as
the president stressed the “plain violation of Beijing’s treaty
obligations with the United Kingdom.” The national security law was
blasted as “the latest” Chinese aggression against its own special
administrative region.
Now
compare all this with the Two Sessions in Beijing ending the day before,
with an intriguing, quite Keynesian performance by Prime Minister Li
Keqiang. This was compelling as much for what Li did not say as for what
he chose to put on the public record.
Let’s review some of the highlights. Li stressed that the NPC’s resolution putting forth a national security law for Hong Kong is meant to protect “one country, two systems,” and not as an “aggression.”
Instead
of demonizing the WHO, Beijing is committed to a serious scientific
investigation of the origins of Sars-Cov-2. “No cover-up” will be
allowed, Li said, adding that a clear, scientific understanding should
contribute to global public health. Beijing also supports an independent
review into the WHO’s handling of Covid-19.
Geopolitically, China rejects a “Cold War mentality”
and hopes China and the US will be able to cooperate. Li stressed the
relationship could be either mutually beneficial or mutually harmful. Decoupling
was described as a very bad idea, for bilateral relations and for the
world at large. China, after all, will start to import more and that
should also profit US companies.
Domestically,
the absolute focus – 70% of the available new funding – will be on
employment, support for small and medium enterprises and measures to
encourage consumption rather than investment in infrastructure building.
In summation, in Li’s own words: “The central government will live on a
tight budget.”
If
not completely Sisyphean in the long term, it will at least be a
“daunting task” in Li’s terminology considering the previously stated
end-of-2020 deadline would be to reach President Xi Jinping’s goal of
eliminating poverty across China.
Li
said absolutely nothing about three key themes: the alarming Himalayan
border stand-off between China and India; the prospects for Belt and
Road Initiative (BRI) projects; and China’s complex geopolitical and
geo-economic relationship with the European Union (EU).
The
non-mention of the last theme is especially noticeable after Chancellor
Merkel’s quite encouraging assessment earlier this week and EU foreign
affairs chief Josep Borrell’s remark to a group of German ambassadors
that “the end of an American-led system and the arrival of an Asian
century” is now “happening in front of our eyes.”
Confirming
steady rumors emanating from Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels and Paris,
China and East Asia are taking precedence as the EU’s top trading
partner. This is something that will be extensively discussed at the
upcoming EU-China summit next autumn in Germany. The EU is going
Eurasia. Team Trump won’t be amused.
Dancing with wolves, remixed
Predictably,
the Beijing leadership needs to focus on domestic consumption and
reaching the next level on technological production so as not to fall
into the notorious “middle-income trap.”
Fine-tuning the balance between domestic stability and a very strong
and wide global reach is another tak that brings Sisyphos to mind.
Xi,
Li and the Politburo very well know that Covid-19 hugely affected
migrants, farmers and small-scale family entrepreneurs. The risk of
social unrest is very high. Unemployment protection is far from
Scandinavian levels. So back to business, fast, has to be the top
priority.
Enveloping
this strategy is a new diplomatic offensive. Foreign Minister Wang Yi,
usually meticulously nuanced and polite, is now increasingly exasperated.
Earlier this week, Yi defined the demonization of China by the US over
Covid-19 as “a product of the three no’s”: no grounds, no factual basis
and no international precedent.
Moreover,
he described attempts to blackmail China through threats as
“daydreaming.” The Global Times, for its part, has blasted the Trump
administration for “typical international hooliganism” and additionally
stressed that “labeling Chinese diplomacy as ‘wolf warrior’ reflects an
extreme ideology.”
The
“wolf warrior” plot is bound to thicken. Beijing does seem ready to
deploy its diplomatic force as wolf warriors. One should always keep in
mind General Qiao Liang: if China is forced to dance with wolves, it might as well set up the rhythm.
That
applies perfectly to the Hong Kong question. Whatever Team Trump
thinks, Beijing has no interest whatsoever in disturbing the Hong Kong
financial system or collapsing the Hang Seng index. That’s exactly what
the black block protesters last year were accomplishing.
What
we saw during this week is the result of what a task force, sent to
Shenzhen last year to examine every angle of the protests, relayed back
to the leadership in Beijing.
The sources of financing for the hardcore black blocks have reputedly been cut. The local 5th columnist “leaders” have been isolated. Beijing was being very patient tackling the whole mess. Then along came Covid-19.
The
economic consensus in Beijing is that this will be an L-shaped recovery –
actually very slow on the bottom of the L. So the West will buy much
less from and invest much less in China.
This
implies that Hong Kong is not going to be very useful. Its best bet has
already been offered many times over: integrate with the Greater Bay
Area and be part of a booming Pearl river delta southern cluster. Hong
Kong businesses support it.
Another
conclusion was that, whatever Beijing does, the Sinophobic hysteria in
the US – and in this case also the UK – is unabated. So now is the right
moment to go for the national security law, which of course is against
subversion, against British-era “wigs” (judges) acting as 5th columnists and, most of all, against money laundering.
A Global Times editorial cut to the chase: the national security law is the “death knell” for US intervention in Hong Kong.
Cold War 2.0
As
much as Yi may have said, this time diplomatically, that we’re “on the
brink” of a new Cold War, the fact is the Trump administration’s hybrid
war on China – or Cold War 2.0 – is now fully established.
US
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is openly threatening Five Eyes allies
and vassals, as well as Israel, with consequences if they fail to ditch
any projects linked to Belt and Road.
That
is intimately linked to the avalanche of threats and measures against
Huawei and everything connected to Made in China 2025, which proceeds at
a fast pace but without using the terminology.
The
official Trump re-election campaign strategy “China, China, China,”
detailed in a 57-page memo to Republicans, is bound to be deployed as
total hybrid warfare, including non-stop propaganda, threats, infowar
technologies, cyber warfare and breaking news fabrications.
The
ultimate objective shared by every Sinophobic strand, whether
commercially-minded or think tank-based, is to derail the Chinese
economy – a top level competitor – by any means necessary and thus
cripple the ongoing Eurasian integration process whose three key nodes,
China, Russia and Iran, happen to be top “threats” according to the US
national security strategy.
Once again, the gloves are off. And Beijing won’t stop counterpunching in kind.
It’s
as if Beijing had so far serially underestimated the Deep State and
Beltway’s larger than life obsession with always remaining the
undisputed hegemon, geopolitically and geo-economically. Every
“conflict” erupting across the chessboard is and will continue to be
directly linked to the twin objectives of containment of Russia and
disruption of the Belt and Road.
I previously referred to the Empire of Chaos,
where a plutocracy progressively projects its own internal
disintegration upon the whole world. But only now is the serious game
starting, complete with Trump’s intention to test nuclear bombs again.
Not against a bunch of low-life “terrorists,” but against a serious,
peer-competitor: the Eurasian strategic partnership.
It would be too much to expect Team Trump to learn from Gramscian analyses
of Belt and Road, which demonstrate how the Chinese Dream – a
Confucianist variant of neoliberalism – marks the evolution of China
into a core production zone in the neoliberal world economy by profiting
from the existing global legal structure.
Team Trump has vociferously announced its own strategy. Expect serial, silent Sun Tzu counterpunches.
(Republished from Asia Times by permission of author or representative)
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