Global Courant
The contradictions of China-bashing in the United States begin with how often it is downright untrue.
The Wall Street Journal reports that the “Chinese spy balloon” that shot down President Joe Biden to enormous patriotic fanfare in February has in fact sent no photos or anything to China.
White House economists have tried to excuse ongoing US inflation, saying it is a global problem and inflation is worse elsewhere in the world. from China inflation percentage amounts to 0.7% on an annual basis.
Financial media highlights what China’s GDP growth rate is like lower then … in the past. China now estimates it to be 2023 GDP growth will be 5-5.5%. Estimates for the US GDP growth rate fluctuate around 1-2% in 2023.
China-bashing has intensified into denial and self-deception — it’s akin to pretending the United States hasn’t lost wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and more.
The BRICS coalition (China and its allies) now has one significantly larger global economic footprint (higher total GDP) than the Group of Seven (the United States and its allies).
China is outgrowing the rest of the world expenditure on research and development.
The American empire (like its foundation, American capitalism) is no longer the dominant world power it once was just after World War II. The empire and economy have since shrunk significantly in size, power and influence. And they continue to do so.
Putting that genie back in the bottle is a battle against history that the United States is unlikely to win.
The Russia delusion
Denial and self-deception about the changing global economy have led to major strategic mistakes. For example, before and shortly after February 2022, when the war in Ukraine began, US leaders predicted that Russia’s economy would collapse from the effects of the “greatest of all sanctions” led by the United States. Some US leaders still believe the crash will happen (publicly, if not privately), despite no indication.
Such predictions grossly miscalculated the economic strength and potential of Russia’s allies in the BRICS. Led by China and India, the BRICS responded to Russia’s need for buyers of its oil and gas.
The United States made sure its European allies stopped purchasing Russian oil and gas as part of its war on sanctions against the Kremlin over Ukraine. However, the US pressure tactics used on China, India and many other countries (inside and outside BRICS) to stop buying Russian exports backfired. They not only bought oil and gas from Russia, but also exported some of it back to European countries.
World power configurations had followed the changes in the world economy at the expense of the US position.
The military delusion
War games with allies, threats against US officials and US warships off China’s coast may mislead some into imagining that these moves are intimidating China. The reality is that the military disparity between China and the United States is now smaller than at any time in China’s modern history.
China’s military alliances are the strongest they’ve ever been. Intimidation that didn’t work from the time of the Korean War and since then certainly won’t be effective now.
Former President Donald Trump’s tariff and trade wars were designed, US officials said, to persuade China to change its “authoritarian” economic system. If so, then that goal has not been achieved. The United States simply does not have the power to force the matter.
American polls suggest that the media has succeeded in a) portraying China’s economic and technological progress as a threat, and b) using that threat to lobby against the regulation of US high-tech industries.
The technical delusion
Of course, corporate resistance to government regulation predates the rise of China. However, encouraging animosity towards China provides a useful additional cover for all sorts of business interests.
China’s technological challenge stems from and depends on a huge educational effort based on educating far more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students than the United States. Yet US companies do not support paying taxes to fund education on an equal footing.
Media coverage of this issue rarely addresses that obvious contradiction and politicians usually avoid it as dangerous to their electoral prospects.
Scapegoat China joins scapegoat immigrants, BIPOCs (black and indigenous people of color), and many of the other usual targets.
The broader decline of the American empire and capitalist economic system confronts the nation with the grim question: Whose standard of living will bear the brunt of the impact of this decline? The answer to that question is crystal clear: the US government will implement austerity policies (cutting out vital public services) and allow price inflation and then rising interest rates that reduce living standards and jobs.
On top of the combined economic crash of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic, the majority of middle and lower income earners have so far borne most of the costs of the United States’ decline. That’s the pattern that has followed declining empires throughout human history: Those who control wealth and power are best positioned to pass the cost of decline on to the general population.
The real suffering of that population causes vulnerability to the political agendas of demagogues. They provide scapegoats to offset the anger, bitterness and anger of the populace.
Leading capitalists and the politicians they own welcome or tolerate scapegoats as a distraction from those leaders’ responsibilities for mass suffering. Demagogic leaders scapegoat targets old and new: immigrants, BIPOCs, women, socialists, liberals, minorities of all kinds, and foreign threats.
The scapegoat usually does little more than hurt the intended victims. Failure to solve a real problem keeps that problem alive and available for demagogues to exploit at a later stage (at least until the victims of the scapegoat resist enough to put an end to it).
The contradictions of scapegoating include the dangerous risk that it will overshoot its original goals and cause capitalism more problems than it alleviates.
If anti-immigrant agitation actually slows or halts immigration (as has recently happened in the United States), domestic labor shortages could develop or worsen, which could drive up wages and therefore hurt profits.
If racism similarly leads to disruptive disturbances (as has happened recently in France), profits may be under pressure.
If China-bashing leads the United States and Beijing to take further action against American companies investing in and trading with China, it could cost the American economy very dearly. That this can now happen is a dangerous consequence of China-bashing.
Collaborate (short)
Believing it would be in the best interests of the US, then-President Richard Nixon resumed diplomatic and other relations with Beijing during his 1972 trip to the country. Chinese Chairman Mao Zedong, Premier Zhou Enlai and Nixon began a period of economic growth, trade, investment and prosperity for both China and the United States.
The success of that period prompted China to continue it. The same success has prompted the United States to adopt a different attitude and policy in recent years. More precisely, that success led American political leaders such as Trump and Biden to now view China as the enemy whose economic development is a threat. Accordingly, they demonize Beijing’s leaders.
The majority of American mega-corporations disagree. They benefited greatly from their access to the Chinese workforce and the rapidly expanding Chinese market since the 1980s. That was a big part of what they meant when they celebrated “neoliberal globalization.” However, a significant portion of US business wants continued access to China.
The battle within the United States is now pitting large segments of corporate America against Biden and his equally “neoconservative” foreign policy advisers. The outcome of that battle depends on domestic economic conditions, the presidential election campaign and the political ramifications of the war in Ukraine, as well as the ongoing twists and turns in China-US relations.
The outcome also depends on how the masses of Chinese and American people understand and intervene in the relations between these two countries. Will they see through the contradictions of China-bashing to avoid war, seek mutual accommodation, and thereby build a new version of the shared prosperity that existed before Trump and Biden?
This article was produced by Economy for everyonea project by the Independent Media Institute, which it provided to Global Courant.
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