The failure of the U.S. delegation led by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to break the trade deadlock — and leaving Beijing last Friday earlier than expected without meeting Chinese leaders — is no surprise.
The bilateral confrontation is about more than just trade issues. It is about economic and military global domination. A struggle between the world’s two superpowers to redefine the future rules and their roles of power and hegemony in the 21st-century. A subject I have written about extensively in my Custom Maid for New World Disorder trilogy and Feasting Dragon, Starving Eagle.
Two power-house capitalist economies, one democratic and one communist, trying to ensure their future global dominance of each other.
China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 as a “developing country.” That subjected it to very low tariffs on its exports and allowed China to impose high tariffs on imports. The naive belief was once China grew, the WTO would rewrite China’s tariff’s regime (one of the many criticisms I have voiced of the WTO in Custom Maid Knowledge for New World Disorder). That has not happened and China has refused to do so voluntarily, notwithstanding its promises to do so.
America and its elite corporate-financial establishment accepted this behavior in order to have access to the massive China market and make money there — and at home — with their cheap Made in China low-end consumer products.
That all changed in October 2015, when China announced its Made in China 2025 vision. A plan to dominate 10 next generation hi-end industries — AI, aerospace, agricultural machinery, biotech, electronic vehicles, medicine, power equipment, railways, self-driving cars and shipping — industries America dominates today.
That is why China has been on a hi-tech buying spree in America and Europe, a practice America has stopped and Europe wants to stop as well after China bought Kuka, Germany’s biggest and best robotics company. China has thanked Germany by sending a 5.5 meter statue of Karl Marx to his birthplace, the German city of Trier, as the centerpiece of the communist thinker’s bicentenary celebrations earlier this week.
America wants China to play by the same “Fair Trade” rules because if it doesn’t, and continues to play by its existing WTO rules, China will be the new world economic and military hegemon, a role America does not want to, and should not, give up without a fight. A fight both countries can amicably settle and agree to bring about the revolutionary changes needed for a peaceful, just and harmonious 21st-century and beyond. Isn’t it time America and China again start practicing what they preach? Both countries must join hands to lead the world through climate, economic, military and political change in the 21st-century as true political partners to ensure that the world avoids Armageddon.