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The New Evil Empire
When Ronald Reagan dubbed the Soviet Union an “evil empire” he was blasted for being inflammatory and was accused of wanting to start a nuclear war with the Soviets. Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Soviets from a position of strength and knew the only language dictators understand is strength, Reagan was going to defend American interests. I, for one, find it dishonest and frankly lazy when someone wants to view every world event through the lens of World War 2 or the Cold War because when a viable threat like China arises, Americans will be caught flat-footed. Here we are caught flat-footed and China is making moves quickly.
Liberal intellectuals will lecture Americans and Europeans until they are blue in the face about the evils of imperialism and there is certainly cause to view empires as a negative force in the world due to a history of human rights violations. The debate about the empires of the past is for another time, now is the time to ask will our intellectual and moral betters say anything Chinese Imperialism? Not really; it is being reported but I think if we have learned in the Trump era we know when the media wants to make something a priority. China slowly trying to take away land from 18 different countries (India and Taiwan are the famous ones) but they are claiming ownership of the entire South China Sea in order to expand militarily and economically.
In real-time, we are witnessing a country that will kill anyone, violate anyone’s rights. and lie for any reason in order to gain power and rise at an unprecedented level with almost no resistance. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is finally leading the charge to hold China accountable for putting Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, covering up COVID-19, and violating the Sino-British joint declaration which, of course, means Hong Kong is no longer a place where Western values will be tolerated. China up until 2015 had an abhorrent one-child policy which led to newborn babies, children of God, to be left in the street for dead. I understand the need for strategic partnerships but this partnership is corroding our sense of honor and duty to defend free people.
I will not mince words China is our enemy and we need to treat them like the Cold War adversary they are. COVID-19 exposed for the world to see the lengths media and politicians will go to defend China. If comes down to who has the capability to be tougher on China between Trump and Biden, then Trump wins walking away. The Chinese people are suffering, Hong Kongers are suffering, and if we do not act soon we too will feel the pain of China being the undisputed world superpower. Human dignity depends on us challenging the New Evil Empire.
Published in General
I am in great agreement with your post. I have one small item of contention. If Trump had not withdrawn the Trans=Pacific Partnership Treaty negotiated by the Obama=Biden Administration, 12 pacific nations would have boxed in China. Trump withdrew TPP immediately. But that is in the past. We need to be forward looking.
I would like to hear from my fellow Ricochetti about how to deal with China. Looking at the various predictions on You Tube have the US falling to #3 in GDP, after #1 China and #2 India by 2050. By 2100, the individual citizen of China will be richer than the individual citizen of the U.S. We need to address this now, and not wait until later.
There is another interesting aspect of this. From 1000 to 1880 China and India had the largest economies in the world. The United States surpassed China only in 1880. The Chinese believe that it is their destiny to dominate the world again.
What to do? I am not sure. However one of my first steps would be to offer green cards to any Hong Kongers, following in similar moves by the U.K., Canada and Australia. Another would be to increase our level of contact with Taiwan, and to have Navy ships dock there. Another would be for us to marshal the entire world to keep the sea lanes open in the South China Sea. Another would be to create a new TPP. Another would be for us to move medical supplies from China back to friendly countries in our hemisphere. Another would be to create a parallel organization to the U.N. which is limited to democracies.
What is most concerning is how China is mastering the ability to monitor and regulate their citizenry. China is becoming a more totalitarian country, not a less one. The recent Chinese security law applies not only to Hong Kongers, but to anyone anywhere who criticizes China. China is reserving the right to arrest citizens of any country who they can get their hands on. The issue is not that China is becoming stronger, the issue is that a totalitarian country would eclipse us. I am not worried about India since India is a democracy. I am terrified of China.
The 20th Century was called the American Century. I don’t want the 21st Century to be called the Communist China Century. We are in the competition of our lives. We need to get serious about China, and we need to do so now.
I see a lot of talk from liberals and ‘progressives’ about the dangers of RUSSIA, but very little about dangers from China. Yet China has a much larger and more dynamic economy than does Russia, and is very aggressive and pretty successful in its global influence operations.
See my post So, Really Want to Talk About Foreign Intervention?
Indeed, I suspect that many of those talking the most about Russia are also those who are making money, or hope to be making money, through various relationships with China.
As long as American citizens and corporations are addicted to cheap Chinese manufactured goods, this will be tough to accomplish. During Cold War I, we did not do much business with the USSR.
When I read the 53 transcripts released by the House Intelligence Committee (which had been suppressed by Adam Schiff) one of the revelations was when Susan Rice went off on a rant about briefing Michael Flynn. She complained that Flynn was not that interested in hearing about Russia, which he told her was a power in decline, and much more interested in China which he thought a rising threat. She could not understand why he was so insistent. I guess when she testified in 2017, she thought it made her look good and Flynn bad, but she certainly does not look good now.
Mr. Robbins, I am in agreement with your point about TPP especially. It gives them alternative to China.
Antonino,
You are exactly on target. Lenin exploited the anti-colonialist anti-imperialist propaganda theme. What should have been obvious was that a totalitarian bolshevik state would be the worst imperialist colonialist regime in history, a pure hegemony. China is the new Evil Empire for sure. They have put people in concentration camps. They crush liberty in Hong Kong. They threaten Taiwan, S. Korea, Japan, Australia, and India. They usurp territory in the South China Sea. They enslave their own people using the internet as a means of social control. They invest in emergent nations in Africa only to control and use them as leverage. They have weaponized COVID-19, masking its real danger and allowing the world to suffer by its spread. With the confusion they have spread in the West they moved to their entirely illegal usurpation of the sovereignty of Hong Kong.
I didn’t want Great Britain to offer citizenship to Hong Kongers. I wanted Great Britain to declare the agreement with China null and void then offer Hong Kong Commonwealth status.
Regards,
Jim
China bought the Democrat Party, beginning with Bill Clinton. The Loral deal was the start. Biden got to the trough in the Obama administration. Ukraine was a sideshow. Big multinati0nals like Disney are fighting Trump and his supporters to keep their links to China warm and friendly,. The NBA is another China owned entity.
Some of the NTs need to remember how toxic Reagan was seen. In 1976, the GOPe made him take a near Democrat to assuage their panic at the wild man.
Some is that, like Walmart, but a lot is the money that big corporations make in China. Boeing, Disney, etc.
I agree with you Jim. I hope that America can create a global consensus to hold China accountable.
I will certainly read your post. Russia is certainly a geopolitical foe just not our biggest one. It is an excellent point that China has a dynamic economy and it is very good at manipulating internal divisions, as well as throwing its weight around in global institutions.
On the other hand . . .
I spent a lot of time in China from 2000 to 2011. I was always aware in speaking with people that they needed to be cautious and careful in their words to avoid speaking about anything remotely political (the situation got worse in my later years of travel there). I always left feeling lucky to be an American who didn’t have to worry about that. Now we are in an era where the wrong choice of words can get you fired, kicked out of college, ostracized and denounced publicly.
In recent years China has begun establishing a Social Credit system which gives you a score based on your conformity to the dictates of the state and designed for eventual use to establish entitlement to jobs, careers, travel, purchases, ability to get bank loans etc. I now think it possible the US may have a fully implemented Social Credit system prior to China.
In China permitted religions are strictly controlled and some actively persecuted. If Biden wins and the D’s control the Senate, I think the newly expanded Supreme Court will act to curtail our remaining constitutional protections for religion.
Absolutely dead on and all of the left wing of the Democrat party is focused on weakening the US so much that one might suspect Chinese support. While they may be that dumb and disconnected and may not get much Chinese support they serve Chinese interests. The moderates in the Democrat party are catering to these folks out of cowardice and attacking Trump for their reasons rather than real reasons. Trump is the first President to begin to come to grips with the China challenge. It’s real and if our left actually gets power in the US it won’t last long because they will lose it to the Chinese. The whole thing plays out by China’s standards, they’re ahead of their game plans and getting more aggressive than they had planned, but they still will take their time and play many cards other than military.
I think at a gut level Trump understands the threat.
I leapt from the couch, jumped up and down, and yelled, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!!!!!”
Vivid memory.
That Ronald Reagan knew how to turn a phrase.
Joe Biden has apparently promised to protect American manufacturing jobs by implementing a higher tax on the foreign earnings of American corporations. I’ve seen similar proposals for others, and it can’t work, because it implicitly assumes that all corporations are Americans.
If a manufacturing company wants to take advantage of lower foreign costs but can’t do so directly because of the foreign-profits tax, all they have to do is to import the products from a non-US company…voila, no foreign earnings involved.
And if all US manufacturing companies should (very improbably) become super-patriotic and do all their manufacturing in the US, then foreign companies will merely export their products directly into the US.
Tariffs are apparently theologically unacceptable to the Dems at the moment, though historically, they were the party that favored them.
While I would like for Hong Kong to be part of the Commonwealth, I don’t think that the U.K. is willing to engage in a land war in Asia to do so.
Michael Kennedy: China bought the Democrat Party, beginning with Bill Clinton……. Big multinati0nals like Disney are fighting Trump and his supporters to keep their links to China warm and friendly,. The NBA is another China owned entity.
• If you listen to Kyle Bass and Trump Advisor Peter Navarro you would know that in every deal that granted a Multi-National access to China’s markets the ChiComs demanded huge accommodations including a strong voice and presence in the Corporate Management team of these Multi- National corporations getting access. This arrangement mirrors the situation in China where all Chinese corporations have a majority silent partner: the ChiCom regime. The ChiComs have set themselves up ultimately to be the boss. Of Everything.
• Again some of Kyle Bass’s contacts in China say that 45% of the Chinese loans to their business entities are underwater. 45%! American big banks flush with our QE lent mega-billions to China, as well as did with lesser cash many Hedge funds including Romney’s Bain Capital and the Bush’s Carlyle Group. This means that most of our Financial Giants are beholden to China in a manner similar to this J Paul Getty quote “If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. All the Big Banks are going to need a enormous bailout dwarfing that of 2008-9. To get any deal they should be broken up along the lines of Glass Steagal where Banking operations are limited to one state and these banks can no longer be involved in Investment banking. Post 2008-9 and Frankenstein Dodd small business lending got crushed. We cannot let that happen again. We need to radically reform Wall Street and our Banks to get America back on it’s feet.
• The real kicker: A study by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has identified 83 mostly western Multinationals including Google, Apple, Disney, Microsoft, Walmart, GM, BMW,Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, Jacquar, Nike, Gap, Adidas, Tommy Hilfiger, Huawei, Samsung and many more as being involved with the Uighur Slave Trade and other human rights abuses. Under Trump Executive Order 13818 on the Property of Persons Involved in Serious Human Rights Abuse of December 20, 2017 all these companies imposes “tangible and significant consequences” which can block all property and interests in property and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn or otherwise dealt in.
Trump has now a really big stick to use on all these companies. I would propose:
• Everyone of these businesses file a report on all the Chinese Demands required by their Business Deal.
• Ban these companies from political donations and ban these companies from censoring or influencing the internet
• In exchange for more severe sanctions, where appropriate but not always, demand that these companies bring back to the United States all business manufacturing to America in a front-loaded program of 6 months to a year or else the big hammer comes down.
Gary,
So your solution is to submit to the false claims of your adversary without any kind of a struggle. Stalin made his claims on Berlin in 1948. Truman could have just knuckled under to the “inevitable”.
Regards,
Jim
We already had troops in Berlin, and the Soviets had cut off ground support, not air support. There are no British troops in Hong Kong. Are you suggesting that the British take on the People’s Liberation Army from a dead stop? What do you think will happen when British commandos land on the beaches of Hong Kong?
Gary,
You tell me. If we had stood behind Great Britain as a unified force and taken the claim to the U.N. before China made its move with the mainland security law we would have had them off balance. Now that we have appeased the giant dragon it will be hungry for more. What happens when they surround and threaten Taiwan? Hong Kong is just an appetizer for the hungry beast. Will you again appease them and just give them Taiwan?
Regards,
Jim
There was an article (paywall) in the Wall Street Journal looking at ways in which companies like Huawei resemble entities like the East India Company in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The authors note:
I don’t think that’s an accident. I doubt that the CCP has forgotten the East India Company and its country trader customers who did the dirty work of smuggling the opium the Company grew into China:
The CCP may have learned from the way that the charters permitted the Companys’ many years of quasi-independence; Huawei and the other PLA companies are more direct tools of the CCP. And why not? The British crown didn’t have the resources or the population to directly exploit India, and had to grant monopolies to British merchants who did. China is in a very different position. In 1800, the world had about a billion people; about 1% were in Britain, Scotland and Wales. China today has about 18% of the world’s population.
Nor has the CCP forgotten the Opium Wars. By ending the British legal legacy in Hong Kong (which the British forced China to cede in the Second Opium War) the CCP has, in a very real sense, finally ended the Opium Wars. I also doubt that it’s a coincidence that China is smuggling synthetic opiates into the United States. Why? The USA succeeded the British Empire (which smuggled opium into Imperial China) as the hegemonic
English speaking gwailoWestern power.Back to the WSJ:
It all depends on what you mean by corporate sovereignty. Or free trade.