The belief that European, Christian capitalist Russia was our enemy and imperially aggressive, communist-party-led, atheistic China was a “country we could do business with” was a madness which could only stem from the corrupted anti democratic corporatism of Obama, Clinton, Cameron and Merkel.
But even the dimwits who daily attack Russia are slowly waking up to the Chinese threat. The left wing Washington Post, friend of the corporatist right and the authoritarian left, noted that at least 3.2m jobs had been lost to “trade” with China. The left leaning “Economic Policy Institute” reported “The growing trade deficit with China has cost jobs in all 50 states” – and they wonder why Trump was elected!
US Imports from China grew from $102 billion the year it joined the World Trade Organisation in 1991 to $438 billion in 2013 – nearly 4 times Chinese imports from the USA. This imbalance has been achieved by an authoritarian centralised political system which can direct labour, suppress democratic ambitions, bulldoze villages for industrial development, censor the internet, manipulate its exchange rate, subsidise business and effectively suppress labour costs to make exports artificially cheap. This has been most keenly felt in the British steel industry where the UK Government is powerless (inside the EU) to apply countervailing tariffs.
In China political control goes hand in glove with economic growth. When Wukan, a southern fishing village elected its own leaders to fight land seizures the Government cracked down on public information about the village and villagers and reporters were arrested. The suppression of information is also secured by US corporations like “Clinton fans” Google and Facebook who cooperate in allowing Chinese censorship of their output in China – even as the Chinese State (for the second time within a year) hacked the personnel records of the US Office of Personnel Management prompting U.S. officials to notify about 4 million current and former federal employees that their personal data could have been compromised.
All this is done despite the rules of the WTO, entry into which has been so extraordinarily profitable for China. Trump has every reason to worry not about free trade but about whether a centralised communist-controlled Chinese economy can be trusted to “trade freely” in our sense at all.
Both Europe and the USA have been wary of Chinese trade methods – and their tendency to steal western patents. Westinghouse, the US nuclear electric technology corporation was forced to hand over 75,000 documents on its own patents in order to win contracts for 4 nuclear power stations in China. The company admitted they had no guarantees about getting any further contracts!
$40 billion of Chinese investment in European companies have been blocked due to security concerns since 2015 and the US Government has blocked many Chinese takeovers. The UK Government under Cameron and Osborne were not at all worried apparently about Chinese investment in British nuclear plants – recently cleared by the May Government.
In the “South China Sea” (i.e. in international waters as recognised by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea) China has encroached on all neighbouring countries’ rights and started building up land for military purposes on reefs known as the “Spratlys”. On July 12 2015, the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration ruled that Beijing has no legal basis to claim South China Sea resources and has violated the sovereign rights of the Philippines. China’s move has virtually wiped out the internationally recognised territorial waters of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia.
It is a measure of the geopolitical disaster of the policies of NATO and the EU towards Russia that Russia has partially taken the Chinese side in this, by saying it is no business of the USA – even though US ships are taking advantage of international waters in the South China Sea, much as Russian ships are doing by sailing through the English Channel!
By being slightly ambiguous in this support Putin perhaps betrays a nervousness – but Russia’s recent extensive industrial agreements with China as a counter to NATO/EU sanctions and aggression towards Russia in Europe understandably weigh heavily on Putin’s mind.
The aggressive and abusive dismissal of the Hague court by China was accompanied by a Chinese state owned newspaper saying Australia was a “paper cat” and that if it got involved in the South China Sea it would become “an ideal target for China to warn and strike”. Australia and Vietnam have fallen victim to significant cyber attacks, Japan has seen a fleet of Chinese fishing boats and coastguard vessels in contested waters.
This is unprecedented aggression from a major power and by alienating Russia until its leaders kowtow to this imperialist China, the West has made a horrendous geopolitical miscalculation. Apart from the Freenations website! apparently only a few leading thinkers have grasped this. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Russia expert George Kennan (before his death) and Henry Kissinger who has made great attempts to keep bridges open to Moscow – and who may now be a “Trump card” in future Russo-American relations.
While Putin emphasises his Christianity, China oppresses Christians. While Russia respects other countries borders (even Eastern Ukraine, after Kiev’s attacks on Russians, he sees as a devolved part of that country) China occupies Tibet, ethnically changing the population by mass migrations, attacks other countries’ territorial waters and steals western patents.
While Putin’s Russia has seen a record building and refurbishment of Churches, in China Gou Hongguo who had protested at the removal of church crosses and the demolition of Christian places of worship was given a 3 year suspended prison sentence. This leniency was granted after his admission to “subversion and planning an uprising” and agreeing not to appeal. Another Christian activist, Hu Shigen, an elder at Holy Love Church in the city of Jinhua, was jailed for seven years for similar charges.
While Putin entertains British veterans of the wartime arctic convoys in Russia, invites the children of Western diplomats to the Kremlin Christmas festivities and welcomes western corporate investment, the British corporate fraud investigator Peter Humphry was arrested, paraded in front of Chinese television in an iron cage and imprisoned without trial for 2 years, refused treatment for his prostate problem (which then became a tumour) and was constantly told to sign a confession for crimes he did not commit.
While Putin plans reductions in defence spending the Chinese greatly increase their own. While Putin refuses to retaliate against Obama’s farcical expulsion of Russian diplomats, China arrests dissidents in Hong Kong and gives a special award to Robert Mugabe who has driven unemployment in Zimbabwe to 90%.
But the Cameron Government invited the Chinese President to London and hurled abuse at Vladimir Putin.
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
