The Last Thing You Want is an Awakened China – Keep poking the ‘Tiger’ and You Will Get Bitten
Kojo Lumumba Bandele
On Dec. 18, 2022, at 6:17 AM, nbcnews.com posted the following story by Megan Lebowitz. The headline was most intriguing as was the story.
What could GOP control of the House mean for U.S.-China tensions?
“Whatever the Biden administration does, the Republican opposition will take a position to the right of that and say that it’s not enough,” one analyst said.
WASHINGTON — Congressional Republicans have vowed to get tougher on China as they prepare to take control of the House, cheering critics of Beijing but also raising concern that one of Washington’s most important bilateral relationships could be further destabilized.
Both Democrats and Republicans have grown more vigilant about China in recent years, but Republicans more often frame China’s rise as a threat to U.S. economic and national security.
Thanks to Ms. Lebowitz, the truth is plain to see, “Republicans more often frame China’s rise as a threat to U.S. economic and national security.” Why do Republicans fear that China’s rise to power threatens U.S. economic security, which is America’s national security [blanket]. Presently, America, and therefore the Western world, need the goods and services that China produces and exports.
Whether you want to accept it, or not, America is far more dependent on China than China is dependent on the US and the West.
Although Democrats kept control of the Senate in the midterm elections last month, Republicans are in a stronger position to scrutinize President Joe Biden’s China policies with their slim majority in the House.
“Whatever the Biden administration does, the Republican opposition will take a position to the right of that and say that it’s not enough,” said Graham Allison, a professor of government at Harvard University who was an assistant defense secretary in the Clinton administration.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican nominee for House speaker, has said he would like to lead a congressional delegation to Taiwan, a self-ruling island Beijing claims as its territory [which in fact, it is.] Such a move would be guaranteed to infuriate China, which responded to a similar visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the summer with unprecedented live-fire military drills.
Methinks you need to listen to Ms. Lebowitz. We know the Military/Industrial complex loves war for the profits produced, allowing the American lives lost as acceptable collateral damage. They learned that from the British and Dutch, East and West India Company’s business policies centuries ago. Here’s the Dutch, as a brief example.
According to its charter, the Dutch West India Company (WIC) held a monopoly in shipping and trade in a territory that included Africa south of the Tropic of Cancer, all of America, and the Atlantic and Pacific islands between the two meridians drawn across the Cape of Good Hope and the eastern extremities of New Guinea. Within this territory the States-General authorized the WIC to set up colonies, to sign treaties with local rulers, to erect fortresses, and to wage war against enemies if necessary. [All thanks to Papal Bulls issued by the Popes of Rome.]
Like the Dutch East India Company ( Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, or VOC), the WIC was based on shareholders’ capital, which was initially 7.1 million guilders. The company had a federal structure with five chambers: Amsterdam, Zeeland, Rotterdam, West-Friesland, and Groningen. While each chamber was run by its own directors, company policy was set by a central board of directors known as the Heeren XIX (the nineteen gentlemen). Directors of the chambers appointed representatives for each meeting of the Heeren XIX, and the composition of the board reflected the value of capital invested by the chambers. Meetings of the Heeren XIX were held two or three times per year to plan the outfitting of war fleets and merchantmen, to fix the value of cargoes, and to oversee the company’s financial state, on which the payment of dividends to the shareholders was based. – www.what-when-how.com
China is done with European colonialism. By the way, can you guess who the Heeren XIX were, and what they represented. This development of Capitalism began in full force with the introduction of the Court Factor at the end of the Middle Ages in the late 15th century. [Please see my post dated December 9, 2022, for further clarification.] As much as I would like to continue this point, time does not allow, so I return to the Republicans.
McCarthy also says he plans to create a House select committee on China, the first since the late 1990s.
“The Chinese Communist Party is the greatest geopolitical threat of our lifetime,” he said in a statement last week announcing that the committee would be led by Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis.
Kevin is correct.
Xi Jinping’s campaign against private enterprise, it is increasingly clear, is far more ambitious than meets the eye.
The Chinese President is not just trying to rein in a few big tech and other companies and show who is boss in China.
He is trying to roll back China’s decades long evolution toward Western-style capitalism and put the country on a different path entirely, a close examination of Mr. Xi’s writings and his discussions with party officials, and interviews with people involved in policy making, show.
The Wall Street Journal, September 20, 2021
President Xi is following a course that is in the best interest of his people, which is the same thing Kevin McCarthy is doing, but the two courses are divergent and will clash violently, and only because the European’s only means to conflict resolution is war.
The WJS article continues,
“China has entered a new stage of development,” Mr. Xi declared in a speech in January. The goal, he said, is to build China into a “modern socialist power.”
…Mr. Xi has signaled plans to go much further. During a leadership meeting in August, he emphasized a goal of “common prosperity,” which calls for a more equal distribution of wealth. This would be achieved in part through more government intervention in the economy and more steps to get the rich to share the fruits of their success.
If you can’t categorize Chairman Xi’s objective of “common prosperity” as anything but brilliantly altruistic, you need to seriously examine your value system.
An Aug. 29 online commentary circulated by state media called it a “profound revolution” for the country.
“Xi does think he’s moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world,” said Barry Naughton, a China economy expert at the University of California, San Diego. “I call it a government-steered economy.”
I too think President Xi is moving to a new kind of system that doesn’t presently exist anywhere in the world until now. I call it Equism. Please see my book, Capitalism Birthed Racism: When Racism Will End, and What Will Replace Capitalism; Equism is the Harbinger for specific detail. A copy is available upon request. Now, back to the Republicans.
…Experts say Biden’s China policy has largely been the same as that of former President Donald Trump, who imposed tariffs on Chinese imports that led to a trade war. The Biden administration went further in October, announcing sweeping export controls limiting China’s access to strategically important semiconductor chips. [Of course, they both work for the same ruling elite.]
Bipartisan ‘China bashing’?
…House Republicans might try to be tougher on China than the Biden and Trump administrations, neither of which have been especially aggressive, said Derek Scissors, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. But if the select committee takes a bipartisan approach, he said, the House might be able to originate legislation that is signed into law.
…The most volatile issue is the status of Taiwan, which Beijing has not ruled out seizing by force. While the White House maintains that its long-standing “One China” policy has not changed, there is bipartisan support in Congress for strengthening Washington’s unofficial ties with Taipei, as well as scattered calls for the U.S. to make a full-throated commitment to defend Taiwan against any Chinese invasion.
…A visit by McCarthy would be “as irresponsible and reckless as his predecessor’s was and will produce another major Chinese step forward in demonstrating their capability to strangle Taiwan…”
The People’s Republic of China’s global ambition and aspirations are shaped by the trauma from its years of occupation by the Japanese and the United Kingdom, when it was forced into accepting British Opium and ceding its Hong Kong territory for one hundred and fifty years. The US still controls Taiwan, a territory claimed by China. ‘Fireworks’ are about to ignite. And the detonation will be catastrophic.
“It ain’t no fun, when the rabbit’s got the gun.”
Amer African Proverb
