The new Cold War with China

[Eric the Green]

My CD player broke down yesterday after just 2 years. Feeling very upset, I looked at it and of course it said, "Made in China".

Alfred McCoy says that China is taking over the world and the USA likely would not win a war with China.





McCoy says in "To Govern the World" that while the USA has been wasting its resources on wars in the Middle East, China has been building pipelines, ports, transport and economic power to move into where the USA has failed to dominate with its poor and wasteful strategy. China seems to be more imperialistic than I had expected years ago. We have waged failed wars and also become more anti-war, while China has stayed out of war and become more pro-war. It wants to take over Taiwan, and the USA is committed to defend Taiwan. A conflict seems more likely.

China is breaking through US alliances and control ringing around Asia, and financing economies around the world. It seems to be in position to be the leading "empire" in the world. As McCoy points out above, the USA military has been able to ring China and Asia with alliances and a strong navy that patrols the coast, and China has started to punch through this ring. The USA did not have to wage overt wars to exercize this power over China, even as it wasted its resources on wars in southeast Asia, the Middle East and even America. On the other hand China and the USA are mutually dependent economically. But China can soon shift to other places to sell its goods.

I am becoming less anti-military, even as I been against these US wars. We can't allow the tyrants to keep taking over the world. Xi Jinping is the leading tyrant in the world. We should not allow China and other tyrants to put more people into subjection. We should not allow ourselves and other nations to fall under the control of tyrants. We will need to defend Taiwan against the growing military power of China.

It seems to me the key to keeping the USA able to defend freedom in the world and here at home is to end neoliberalism. If Republican neoliberalism takes over congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024 (which it WILL if Harris is nominated for president then), we will lose both our freedom here at home and our power to defend it abroad. This is a key fourth turning issue. Only by ending neoliberalism/Reaganomics can we make decisions as a nation to rebuild our economy, military and trade dominance. We need to decrease our commercial dependence on China. We need to put up high tariffs and squeeze them hard. We can only do that if we commit to rebuilding our own industries and make what we need here in the USA. Why have we ceded our economy to the Chinese working class and its tyrants?

Because the CEOs of our industries don't want to pay their workers a fair wage, that's why.

US workers are already demanding higher wages. If we make our goods here, the industrial owners will have to pay higher wages, and not outsource work to China to get cheaper labor. Only then can we raise tariffs, as Trump rightly proposed and Biden seems to support as well, without bankrupting American industry and farmers. Neoliberalism is opposed to this step. It wants no regulations, tariffs and taxes on its clientele: the CEOs, owners and bosses. This Reaganomics/neoliberalism must end. Union power must be restored. The bosses must pay higher taxes so the wealth that the bosses get from higher productivity can be returned to the workers from which they extorted it, and so that we can support our farmers and small business too. The USA state must regulate our economy so it can be strong and free. Restoring our economy means prices will go up for Americans, and the workers and other consumers must be able to pay these prices! US industry and business must be required to enable them to pay. They must be required to pay higher wages, a living wage in a self-reliant USA economy, so that work can be done here in the USA again, and they must be prohibited from outsourcing their work to China and other cheap labor markets. The power of the Chinese economy must be trimmed back by cutting off much of its exploitation of the USA through cheap labor. The USA should open immigration so we can get more willing workers from this source.

Our military power depends on our economic power. China can't be allowed to win if we hope that we and other countries can live in freedom, and not submit to rulers like Xi Jinping, Putin and the Myanmar junta. We need to support the freedom fighters there, and we need to defend against China imposing further tyranny in the Eastern Pacific. We must strengthen and rededicate ourselves to democracy here at home too.

Do the trumpists and the Classic Xers REALLY want to make America great again? If so, it must ditch its neoliberal/Reaganomics opposition to taxes and state intervention, and permit more immigration. American greatness does not depend on protecting white power. It does not depend on allowing free rein to bosses and stopping state interventions in the economy. It depends on building our national power, which depends on taking national responsibility.

The era of decline of the USA to China coincides with its era of neoliberalism, combined with unnecessary militarism. In order to have the military power and the military aid potentials we need to defend freedom now, it must ditch neoliberalism and must apply its military resources in a sane way to defend real freedom fighters, and not to defend its access to outdated energy sources as we have been doing, or seek military imperial power through direct and unnecessary preventive interventions.

Our era is the birth of a global economy and world civilization. That's what our new era post-1890s is all about. No one power must any longer be allowed to dominate, as the supposed great imperial power.

[pbrower2a]

Unless you have a specialized CD player for music, all you need as a CD player is a DVD player such as one that you abandoned when you went to Blu-Ray. It will also almost certainly say "Made in China" even of it comes from a brand that you consider American, Japanese. South Korean, or European.

Should America end up in a war with China, then the quislings will not be so much the admirers of Mao but instead people who want to live like aristocrats in a nation in which fear and poverty prevail. These people would love to have America become 'great' -- if your idea of greatness is an aristocratic order. Just because America has never been a formal aristocracy does not mean that we can't end up with an aristocracy-in-all-but-name.There will be no aristocratic titles, but there will be the glaring hallmark of sybaritic indulgence in a land in which 95% of the people suffer for 2%.

If we are to get higher pay then we must deserve it not only with high productivity but also the willingness to pay prices rather than buy schlock. So get your furniture from an honest-to-God carpenter instead of from a box store. Buy clothes from a tailor instead of from a department store.

Above all, folks... read, read, and read! The old classical standard of excellence remains. That still leaves copious room for people not "dead white males".

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2021, 04:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Unless you have a specialized CD player for music, all you need as a CD player is a DVD player such as one that you abandoned when you went to Blu-Ray. It will also almost certainly say "Made in China" even of it comes from a brand that you consider American, Japanese. South Korean, or European.

Should America end up in a war with China, then the quislings will not be so much the admirers of Mao but instead people who want to live like aristocrats in a nation in which fear and poverty prevail. These people would love to have America become 'great' -- if your idea of greatness is an aristocratic order. Just because America has never been a formal aristocracy does not mean that we can't end up with an aristocracy-in-all-but-name.There will be no aristocratic titles, but there will be the glaring hallmark of sybaritic indulgence in a land in which 95% of the people suffer for 2%.

If we are to get higher pay then we must deserve it not only with high productivity but also the willingness to pay prices rather than buy schlock. So get your furniture from an honest-to-God carpenter instead of from a box store. Buy clothes from a tailor instead of from a department store.

Above all, folks... read, read, and read! The old classical standard of excellence remains. That still leaves copious room for people not "dead white males".

I don't know if the USA can reclaim its industries and rein in the aristocratic bosses. Americans may not be willing to vote for a government that can accomplish this. But Reaganomics/trickle-down Neoliberalism must go, and the people must ditch it forever, or else submit to a China-dominated world. US industry certainly can't be rebuilt unless the bosses are contained and required to pay fair wages, because otherwise the industry will have no customers and no workers. The bosses will continue to oursource and roboticize. They have plenty of money already; they can afford to pay higher wages, continue to produce quality products, and contribute to society and education. Small business is a different matter, but they too can at least pay their employees the wages they need in order to patronize the small businesses in turn and meet their needs including if they are supplied by the big guys.

We need the industries to make quality products. Most if not all of the big box stores now sell imported products made from cheap labor overseas. These stores will have to change if cheap labor is restricted in the USA, and tariffs are high. Free trade is suicide, unless the nations involved are on a level playing field of the peoples' income, peoples' rights and the regulations required. Free trade is building a dangerous imperial tyrant competitor prepared to snuff out democracy and human rights. And Xi Jinping will have a tyrant ally if the likes of Trump is allowed to stage a coup like January 6th and take over the USA. The perpetrators of January 6th must be jailed.

I do need a music CD player next to my bed.

[David Horn]

(11-17-2021, 01:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't know if the USA can reclaim its industries and rein in the aristocratic bosses. Americans may not be willing to vote for a government that can accomplish this. But Reaganomics/trickle-down Neoliberalism must go, and the people must ditch it forever, or else submit to a China-dominated world. US industry certainly can't be rebuilt unless the bosses are contained and required to pay fair wages, because otherwise the industry will have no customers and no workers. The bosses will continue to oursource and roboticize. They have plenty of money already; they can afford to pay higher wages, continue to produce quality products, and contribute to society and education. Small business is a different matter, but they too can at least pay their employees the wages they need in order to patronize the small businesses in turn and meet their needs including if they are supplied by the big guys.

We need the industries to make quality products. Most if not all of the big box stores now sell imported products made from cheap labor overseas. These stores will have to change if cheap labor is restricted in the USA, and tariffs are high. Free trade is suicide, unless the nations involved are on a level playing field of the peoples' income, peoples' rights and the regulations required. Free trade is building a dangerous imperial tyrant competitor prepared to snuff out democracy and human rights. And Xi Jinping will have a tyrant ally if the likes of Trump is allowed to stage a coup like January 6th and take over the USA. The perpetrators of January 6th must be jailed.

I do need a music CD player next to my bed.

The irony exhibited by the monied elites is stunning.  They gave away our industrial base and the technology that drives it for short term profits, now they wonder how they can keep things rolling as an ever growing percentage of the populaiton declines economically and can't buy even the cheap crap they're importing.

The irony of the workers is worse, backing the elites against any remaining interest in the economy they might have.

[Anthony '58]

But spoiling for a fight with China over Taiwan isn't the only danger we face.

Spoiling for a fight with Russia over Ukraine is also a definite possibility.

And a totally pointless possibility too: Both Crimea and the Donets Basin are more than 75% Russian - and the reason the Russians had to retake them in 2014 is because Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred them from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, which didn't really mean anything until the Soviet Union shattered in 1991.

We're poised to make the same blunder that Bill Clinton made when he chose to recognize Tito's similarly arbitrarily-drawn internal borders for Yugoslavia, only to see those borders get blown sky-high when the center couldn't hold there either (it was a miracle that Tito's successors managed to keep the lid on that pressure cooker for a decade after he died).

[Eric the Green]

(12-11-2021, 10:45 PM)Anthony Wrote: But spoiling for a fight with China over Taiwan isn't the only danger we face.

Spoiling for a fight with Russia over Ukraine is also a definite possibility.

And a totally pointless possibility too: Both Crimea and the Donets Basin are more than 75% Russian - and the reason the Russians had to retake them in 2014 is because Khrushchev arbitrarily transferred them from the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954, which didn't really mean anything until the Soviet Union shattered in 1991.

We're poised to make the same blunder that Bill Clinton made when he chose to recognize Tito's similarly arbitrarily-drawn internal borders for Yugoslavia, only to see those borders get blown sky-high when the center couldn't hold there either (it was a miracle that Tito's successors managed to keep the lid on that pressure cooker for a decade after he died).

I don't disagree, mostly. It was Serbian activists' long-held dream to set up a south-slavic state under their rule. World War I was fought to give it to them. But the other south-slavs never readily agreed to Serbian rule any more than they liked Austrian, Nazi or Russian rule. Once a brutal dictator took over Serbia and Yugoslavia, and the Russian Warsaw Pact disintegrated, the Serbian reign of the south slavs ended.

I don't think we will directly enter a war against Russia over Ukraine, at least not under Biden or under Trump. But both Russian invasion of Ukraine and Chinese invasion of Taiwan threaten now.

Personally, I oppose one state taking over another through military invasion. That method of statecraft should be retired, and not allowed. I am also opposed to letting tyrants take over more people. They rule over far too many people as it is. So I would support giving more support to Ukraine and Taiwan if attacked. But it is not the job of the USA alone to enforce international law and impose democracy by force. I hope someday, perhaps at the next "new world order" Uranus-Neptune conjunction in Aquarius in 2165, that the UN will be empowered to enforce these rules by most states of the world, and most states will agree with these rules.

If I got my way, I would have the UN set up elections in Donets and Crimea and let the people decide which country they want to join. All troops except UN troops would be withdrawn or disarmed during this election. The people would have to decide between freedom and democracy versus ethnic identity and cohesion.

[Anthony '58]

Isn't it interesting: Where you are becoming less anti-military, I am becoming less pro-military - for two reasons: First, there is no fiscal, or moral, justification for spending $1.4 trillion to "defend ourselves" against the Irans of this world, when in 1969 we spent a mere $70 billion to defend ourselves against the Soviet Union; and second, think of all the roads, bridges, and high-speed rail we could build if we "only" cut our annual military budget to $514 billion (the $70 billion of 1969 adjusted for inflation) - and considering the much lesser threat posed by Iran etc. (and any total war vs. either Russia or China will result in M.A.D. - Mutually Assured Destruction).

And frankly, what Russia may or may not do in Ukraine - or what China may or may not do in Taiwan - is none of our God damn business. How would we like it if Moscow and/or Beijing were to accuse us of committing "imperialism" in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands (even if we are doing exactly that)?

[Eric the Green]

(12-12-2021, 08:16 AM)Anthony Wrote: Isn't it interesting: Where you are becoming less anti-military, I am becoming less pro-military - for two reasons: First, there is no fiscal, or moral, justification for spending $1.4 trillion to "defend ourselves" against the Irans of this world, when in 1969 we spent a mere $70 billion to defend ourselves against the Soviet Union; and second, think of all the roads, bridges, and high-speed rail we could build if we "only" cut our annual military budget to $514 billion (the $70 billion of 1969 adjusted for inflation) - and considering the much lesser threat posed by Iran etc. (and any total war vs. either Russia or China will result in M.A.D. - Mutually Assured Destruction).

And frankly, what Russia may or may not do in Ukraine - or what China may or may not do in Taiwan - is none of our God damn business.  How would we like it if Moscow and/or Beijing were to accuse us of committing "imperialism" in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands (even if we are doing exactly that)?

well, maybe we are meeting closer to the middle on the military. I'd still like to see us cut the military budget too. And reduce instead of fund more nuclear weapons.

The difference though between us and China and Russia is that our imperial colonies are now part of the USA now for over a century, and were not independent countries like Taiwan and Ukraine are. But I suppose they could accuse us of attacking these countries (former Spanish colonies) 120 years ago, and that would justify opposing support for the countries they are attacking.

I hope we don't go to war, and we won't over Ukraine (but would send support). Russia might be content to conquer just the eastern provinces, I hope. But with Taiwan, it's all or nothing. As for Iran, I would not support the USA going to war with them. It was the USA's fault when Trump pulled out of the nuclear agreement, and we should just pull ourselves back in. But, it may be too late to stop them going nuclear. That doesn't mean we should attack them, though. But Israel probably would, and like it or not, we could be drawn in then.

[Bob Butler 54]

For some time I have been suggesting that democratic culture can out compete autocratic one.  On the other hand, I could not foresee how exactly China’s autocracy would fail.

Now there is a possibility.  China used capitalism to compete well with the west.  Before the Chinese Revolution triumphed, the highly oppressive allies of the European colonial policies were really oppressing the people, creating a very unpleasant time which no one was tempted to repeat.  Would you want to relive from the Opium Wars through the time of the Reds and Experts?  No wonder Mao won?

But recently they have been backing away from capitalism, pressing autocratic control, and as a result their economy is failing.  Companies that used to chase China’s huge market and cheap workforce are failing or finding other areas to work in.

While the CCP is fond of brinksmanship and making enemies of their neighbors, they are not in an economic position to carry through what they preach.  I would not be surprised if the currently overly aristocratic leaders are forced to swing capitalistic and perhaps even democratic.

[sbarrera]

What I've read elsewhere is that the main difference between the American and Chinese approaches of global engagement is that the U.S. brings its ideological baggage along, whereas the Chinese just offer a deal too good to refuse. The U.S. has this Wilsonian "spreading liberal democracy" notion and every deal with the U.S. comes with strings attached regarding human rights and representative government, even to the point that we will enforce the rules at gunpoint, as in our recent wars of intervention. But China just comes in with cold hard cash and stays out of your affairs. Torture your own citizens all you want, we don't care, we'll still build you a port and roads that lead to it. In a sense, Trump was actually steering the U.S. into the same strategy, but unfortunately in the only way that an American could - as a grifter.

[Bob Butler 54]

The US has been known to push their elite corporate interests, not as bad as the Chinese seeking out addiction, but overall a decent summary.

[David Horn]

(02-19-2022, 12:51 PM)sbarrera Wrote: What I've read elsewhere is that the main difference between the American and Chinese approaches of global engagement is that the U.S. brings its ideological baggage along, whereas the Chinese just offer a deal too good to refuse. The U.S. has this Wilsonian "spreading liberal democracy" notion and every deal with the U.S. comes with strings attached regarding human rights and representative government, even to the point that we will enforce the rules at gunpoint, as in our recent wars of intervention. But China just comes in with cold hard cash and stays out of your affairs. Torture your own citizens all you want, we don't care, we'll still build you a port and roads that lead to it. In a sense, Trump was actually steering the U.S. into the same strategy, but unfortunately in the only way that an American could - as a grifter.

There is one additional difference, the Chinese negotiate tougher deals and are more ruthless in enforcing them.  We'll see whether our "soft" imperialism is preferred to the Chinese practice of seizing the infrastructure they build and using in to generate even more wealth.  To be frank about it, it's a close call.