Recently his emphasis has been on China. There is consensus in the establishment of both the Democratic and Republican Parties that China has emerged as the most serious threat to the U.S. empire and world domination.
Biden is keeping the tariffs Trump imposed on Chinese goods.
Earlier in March, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said, “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system, all the rules, values and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.”
The “international system” he is referring to came into existence following the Second World War. The U.S. emerged from the war with unquestioned military superiority over the capitalist world, and economic domination of it expressed in the power of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the role of the Federal Reserve Bank’s international domination.
The U.S. maintains approximately 600 military bases around the world to protect the interests of its empire.
This is the “international system”, “relationships” and “rules” Blinken is referring to, “that make the world work the way we want” that China is “seriously” challenging.
Whenever capitalist politicians speak of “we”, “national interests” and “values” of the “American people” they are using euphemisms to mean the interests of the ruling capitalist class and its imperialist system.
Recently, Biden met with leaders of Japan, India and Australia — what has become known as the “Quad”, an alliance against China.
On March 17, Vijay Prashad, a noted Indian historian, journalist and Marxist intellectual, was interviewed on Democracy Now.
He said, referring to Blinkin’s statement, that the Biden Administration doesn’t think that China is a military threat to the United States. “After all, the Chinese military has the capacity to defend its homeland, but not in any way threatening to the United States.
“In fact, it’s U.S. naval vessels that are sailing very close to the Chinese mainland in so-called freedom of navigation sorties right close to Chinese territorial waters….
“What they’re talking about has been clarified at this recent Quad meeting.
“The United States government understands that China’s scientific and technological developments, particularly in robotics, in telecommunications, in green technology and so on, has far surpassed that of the U.S. and European companies.
“This is an existential threat as far as the U.S. is concerned… China doesn’t threaten the average American citizen. But Chinese telecommunication companies, like Huawei and ZTE, are a generation ahead of U.S. telecommunications companies.
“And, rather than compete on a free market with these companies, the U.S. government is using immense military pressure, diplomatic pressure and a sort of information war to push back China into its boundaries.
“It’s one thing, as far as the U.S. is concerned, for Chinese workers to produce products for U.S. companies. It’s quite another thing when Chinese companies are competing fair and square against U.S. companies.”
The U.S. has tried to stop countries from adopting the Huawei 5G telecommunication system with bullying, with some success. But that is fraying, given that Huawei’s system is much better and cheaper than what U.S. and European countries offer.
An example is Brazil, where Trump succeeded in getting the “Brazilian Trump,” the authoritarian President Jair Bolsonaro, to reject Huawei. But since Trump lost, he now is open to Brazilian companies making deals with Huawei, for economic reasons, the New York Times reports.
China is also challenging U.S. influence in other ways, such as providing “third world” countries with financing at low interest for infrastructure projects in the Belt and Road initiative connecting China through Asia to Europe, and now extending to Latin America and parts of Africa.
During the interview, Democracy Now’s Juan Gonzalez said “Latin America has now become the second major region for Chinese investment abroad. The kinds of projects that the Chinese are helping to finance are really astounding.
“There’s the $5 billion that’s being spent to build two hydroelectric dams in the Patagonia section of Argentina over the Santa Cruz River. A transcontinental railroad between Peru and Bolivia, and a new canal across Nicaragua that would compete with the monopoly that the Panama Canal has over world shipping.
“Really, most Americans are not aware of this enormous infrastructure that’s resulting from the Belt and Road policy of China.”
Prashad pointed out that “very little capital has come into these countries from the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund that’s enabled infrastructure projects. So what the Chinese have done with the Belt and Road Initiative is provide vast amounts of finance to develop some of this infrastructure, to bridge the gap [with the imperialist countries].
“This is clear in the case in Bolivia, during the administration of Evo Morales, they cut some dry important deals with the Chinese to not only mine lithium, which is a kay component of batteries, but to also develop the processing of lithium in Bolivia…”
This was one of the reasons that the U.S. supported the reactionary coup against Morales.
The IMF won’t lend to “third world” countries unless they agree to austerity reforms, precluding any infrastructure projects.
The mainstream press is right behind the administration’s charges that providing such loans to help countries historically oppressed by Western imperialism is an “existential threat”.
Along the same lines, a long editorial in the March 19 New York Times titled “Rising to the Challenge of China” decried that China’s entry into the world economy didn’t result in China become subservient to what Blinkin refers to as the “international system” that makes “the world work the way we want it to.”
The editorial said “This became obvious in 2015, when the Chinese government released a strategic plan called Made in China 2025, which outlined how it would use government subsidies and state-owned enterprises to dominate key technologies.
“Instead of the global economic system changing China, China is changing the global system…”
Another article in the New York Times warned, “China In Giving Latin America Vaccines and Gaining Leverage”.
How dastardly! Providing vaccines to Latin America while the U.S. won’t, is gaining unfair leverage.
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman raised with Prashad this article, noting that Brazil, which undergoing a massive surge on the coronavirus because of Bolsonaro’s following Trump’s disastrous policies concerning the virus, is now asking China for its vaccine.
“China is the dominant supplier of vaccines in Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Bolivia,” Goodman said. “And the U.S. is either being accused of hoarding vaccines or fighting the ability to get these vaccines around the world.”
Prashad said “there should be no patent on these vaccines. They need to be unlocked. India and South Africa are quite right to ask for them to be unlocked.
“What the Chinese are doing with Sinovac [the vaccine developed in China] is essentially treating it as if it is an unlocked vaccine, delivering it at scale to countries around the world. This should not be seen as a political issue.
“Why should a Swiss company or a U.S.-based company be making billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars, on the pandemic?
“We used to talk about war profiteering. There should be no pandemic profiteering. Pandemic profiteering should be immoral …. There should be no politics in this. There should be no profit in this. This should be treated as a human tragedy which has to be dealt with in a collaborative way by human beings.
“The Chinese, but not only the Chinese, the Cubans other countries are showing the way …. China doesn’t have a political litmus test where it sends its Sinovac.
“It’s not saying to Bolsonaro, ‘Mr. Bolsonaro, you and your son have made horrendous, racist comments about the Chinese, therefore we won’t send you the vaccine.’ No, the Chinese say, “We don’t care what you say. It’s a human tragedy. The Brazilian people should not be held hostage by the ill humor of Mr. Bolsonaro.’ “
There is much to criticize China about. It has become a developing capitalist country although still poor (its per capita GDP is a fourth that of the U.S. and the other imperialist countries), with all the evils of capitalism. It has an authoritarian government. It is horribly oppressing the Uyghurs, and more.
But we should not be criticizing China for helping large numbers of “third world” countries with funding for building infrastructure or getting COVID vaccines, or for its “made in China” goal of becoming less dependent on U.S. technology.
Whatever China’s rulers own reasons are for doing so, which include building its economy and international influence, these do not represent an “existential threat” to the American people, nor justify U.S. military threats.
The U.S. is stepping up its military spending for the region. “Just a few weeks ago,” Prashad said, “Admiral Philip Davidson of the Indo-Pacific Command went before the U.S. Armed Services Committee, and asked for $5 billion for the Indo-Pacific Command this year and $27 billion over the next period.
“Davidson said something very chilling at this hearing. He said the United States government must ‘be prepared to fight.’ The Chinese have not used any belligerent language. In fact they have cautioned and said, ‘We need to dial back this tension. This so-called freedom of navigation sorties by the U.S. Navy needs to stop. The United States needed to draw back. There is no need to militarize Guam.’
“A conflict is unimaginable between two nuclear powers, and yet the United States is ramping up the language, spending more to militarize its Pacific bases in Japan and so on.”
Barry Sheppard