By Pepe Escobar – posted with permission
Beijing is turbocharging its Belt and Road and other game-changing plans despite Covid-19 and US hybrid warfare
A Chinese soldier stands guard in a file photo. Photo: AFP/Getty
Amid the deepest economic contraction in nearly a century, President Xi Jinping had already made it very clear, last month, that China should be ready for unprecedented, relentless foreign challenges.
He was not referring only to the possible decoupling of global supply chains and the non-stop demonization of every project related to the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative.
An allegedly leaked internal document, secret and invisible inside China, but nonetheless obtained by some obscure Western-connected source, even stated, essentially, that the blame game against China over the virus is like the backlash over Tiananmen all over again.
According to the secret, invisible document, China would have to “prepare for armed confrontation between the two global powers” – a reference to the US. It’s as if this was an aggressive strategy deployed by the Chinese state in the first place, and not in response to the massive escalation of hybrid warfare 2.0 by the United States government.
For all practical purposes, the hysterical demonization of China across the Beltway has now overtaken the previous hysterics, the demonization of Russia.
What Beijing used to define as a “period of strategic opportunity” is over. There were rumblings in intel circles that the CCP leadership believed this strategic window of opportunity would last unimpeded until the key date, 2049 – when “national rejuvenation” should have been fully accomplished.
Forget it. Now the whole game is about hybrid warfare 2.0 deployed by the US to contain the emerging superpower, whatever it takes. And that implies that a plethora of Chinese plans are now being turbo-charged.
The first order of business is to restore the productivity of the Made in China machine. During his recent visit to Shaanxi province, historically crucial for the CCP, President Xi insisted on it, coupled with an anti-poverty offensive. He had promised to eliminate poverty this year.
Significantly, and contrary to all Western forecasts, China’s exports grew 3.5% in April, compared with a fall of 6.6% in March. This totally shatters the decoupling rationale. The Japanese government, for instance, is accelerating the relocation of factories from China, in haste. Not a very clever strategy.
These factories are leaving a nation that has all but eradicated Covid-19. And if they move to Vietnam, well, that’s also a socialist economy (with Vietnamese characteristics).
China’s GDP growth fell by 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020. Recovery is already on. Officially, unemployment was at 5.9% in late March – not taking into account migrant workers who went back to the big cities after spending the apex of Covid-19 in the countryside. There were projections of unemployment at 20% – later retracted.
Recovery will be a mix of economic stimulus to companies, big and small; investments in infrastructure; and vouchers to a great many of the working masses. The hukou system – linking social rights to place of residence – will also be reformed. The key date to watch will be May 22, during the postponed session of the National People’s Congress.
Belt & Road on track
Geopolitically, the analysis by the French think tank CAPS, a subsidiary of the Ministry of Foreign Relations in Paris, has become practically a mantra across the West.
CAPS is alarmed that China has become indispensable, while questioning its “values” and “hidden agenda.” With the EU totally paralyzed and graphically proving its irrelevance on myriad levels, especially in terms of agreeing upon an effective rescue package for all its members, the – declining – West, almost in block, is terrified that China is in the irreversible process of becoming the top global power.
Even after suffering the massive Covid-19 blow, Beijing seems to be in control of all base variables in its economic policy (financial institutions, large corporations). The CCP will double down on developing the whole production machine side by side with widespread application of AI techniques.
What seems to be established by now is that China will first secure its own national interests – in terms of global supply chains and exports. Short and medium term, there will be concentrated focus on selected New Silk Roads overland and maritime connectivity corridors – Health Silk Road included.
Even with Covid-19, China’s trade with Belt and Road nations grew 3.2% in the first quarter, not shabby even when compared with the 10.8% for the whole of 2019.
According to the Ministry of Commerce, Beijing’s trade with 56 Belt and Road nations scattered across Asia, Africa, Europe and South America represents a very important 30% of total annual trade. Now compare it to the 13% to 32% contraction in global trade forecast by the World Trade Organization for 2020.
So even if a trade drop in the first quarter of 2020 was more than predictable, it’s bound to pick up quickly especially in relation to Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and the Arab world.
Belt and Road is predictably facing myriad short and middle term challenges – all linked to broken connectivity: supply chain breakdowns, widespread travel and visa restrictions, severe border controls, project delays because of increased costs.
Examples include the $6 billion, 150 km-long Jakarta-Bandung high-speed rail in Indonesia, with technical experts from China only slowly trickling back in after being absent because of government restrictions. Along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, mandatory quarantine for Chinese technicians has frozen progress for at least two months. The same applies to projects in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
According to an Economist Intelligence Unit report, Covid-19 will derail Belt and Road in 2020. That may have been the case only for the first four months of the year. Even under Covid-19, Beijing has signed deals for new Belt and Road projects in Myanmar, Turkey and Nigeria.
The 414-km long China-Laos high-speed rail – connecting Yunnan, via Vientiane, to Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore – remains on track, with completion scheduled for the end of 2021. ASEAN, significantly, is now China’s number one trade partner, ahead of the drowning-in-crises EU.
Watch digital yuan
The key takeaway from all this is that the CCP’s complex macro-strategy will be undisturbed. That implies that China will remain the top engine of the global economy, with or without decoupling, and with Belt and Road at the very core of China’s macro-foreign policy strategy, coupled with a solid drive towards multilateralism.
As much as vast swathes of the world economy, especially across the Global South, show no intention of decoupling from China, Beijing will have to be ready to counterpunch full-spectrum hybrid war by Washington on every front – geo-economic, cybernetic, biological, psychological.
As Kishore Mahbubani detailed in his latest book, that does not mean that China will have the intention – and the capacity – to become a new gendarme of the world. It will certainly turbo-charge its economic and financial power, as in the careful implementation of the possibly gold-backed digital yuan.
And then there’s the relentlessly evolving game-changer responsible for the US establishment’s sleepless nights: the Russia-China strategic partnership.
Two weeks ago, an immensely important geopolitical development was virtually buried by corona-hysteria.
Moscow is very much aware that Washington is deploying missile defense systems very close to Russia’s borders – carrying the potential to deliver a nuclear first strike. Beijing is following this development with alarm.
Moscow being aware of it is just part of the story: the key point is that Russia is confident sophisticated weapons such as the Sarmat and the Avangard will take care of it.
More complex is the issue of Pentagon bioweapon labs in the former USSR – an issue also closely followed by Beijing. Moscow has identified a lab near Tblisi in Georgia, and 11 of them in Ukraine. And way back in 2014, when Crimea was reunited with Russia, scientists also found a lab in Simferopol.
All this information – nuclear and bioweapons – as intel sources confirmed to me, is exchanged at the highest level of the Russia-China strategic partnership.
The next big move in the geopolitical chessboard points to the partnership negotiating their bilateral relations with the US as a team.
Nothing could be more rational, considering they are regarded as the top two “threats” to the US, according to the National Security Strategy.
Talk about a major paradigm shift.
Fractional Reserve banking was first devised by banks in Europe, that accepted merchants/traders’ gold ingots for storage and safekeeping in their vaults. The banks then issued gold certificates to the owners of the gold, so that gold ingots did not have to be physically transported in order to effect payment for purchased commodities from distant sources. The seller merely presented the newly acquired gold certificate to their local bullion bank in exchange for physical gold held there. However, more often than not the merchant just kept the gold certificate or bank note for future trading purposes. What the bullion banks soon discovered was that they could issue more gold certificates than there was physical gold in their vaults, since the gold was rarely physically removed from storage. This was the birth of fractional reserve banking.
But the more modern day use of gold as a backing for paper bank notes is an anachronism, since there was never enough gold in any bank vault to back all the bank notes issued. But the public is bamboozled into thinking that their bank issued paper notes have some value more tangible than a number printed on paper with official looking writing and printing on it. However, these days 98% of all money is immediately created as data entries on bank computers, whenever the bank makes a loan to a borrower on which the bank charges interest.
As the principal of the loan is paid back to the banks, either in total or by installments, it is delated back out of existence on the bank’s computer, but the bank gets to keep the interest. The problem that then ensues is that more money must be created, also as debt, to pay the interest. This is what causes inflation of the currency. The rate of inflation is determined by the weighted average interest rate on all money so created. If the borrower defaults, the bank has to write off the same amount from its assets, but the money has already entered the economy and there is no way to remove it, also leading to more inflation. Since the creation of the US federal reserve in 1913 federal reserve notes have lost 99% of their purchasing power.
China’s government owned central bank does not use fractional reserve banking, it just creates money as needed for its domestic economy without incurring debt to private banks in exactly the same way that Abraham Lincoln issued debt free Greenback to fund the civil war. The trade sanctions imposed by the US government on Russia and China have resulted in closer trade relations between these two countries, that is settled by using a mutually agreed exchange rate between the ruble and the yuan.
Should be no problem for the Chinese to absorb the hit of all that soon to be defaulted on US T-Bill paper then. It will be fun to watch D.C.’s reaction to such an event. Surely there are a handful of cognizanti within the beltway whispering as much to anyone who will listen already. Game over for the dollar after that. I used to think that my predictions of total US collapse and breakup by 2030 were a bit fanciful, but now I realize that they were way too conservative. I think we’re pretty much on death watch right now.
@Disaffected
When the holders of US Treasury Bills that come to maturity receive digital federal reserve notes in exchange credited to their US dollar bank accounts that can be held in any country, not just the US. The US government then then instruct any bank to freeze any account it so wishes on any pretext. This is in fact the way that the US reneges on US Treasury Bills held offshore.
Well one of us is deluded, if not both. My understanding is that if a Gov. creates ‘money’ it’s a simple call to the printer, then on reciept of the notes pay the printer, after that all that’s left is spending the ‘money’ so lets assume a railroad at 20mil a mile for 500 miles, sourcing all the necessaries internally that boils down to 10bil. spent largely on labour, and once the ‘moneys’ spent that’s it done finished no debt, perhaps a little tax to control inflation. If on the other hand it borrows the ‘money’ from a bank the bank will create the money out of thin air by calling the printer and paying him on reciept of the notes, however first they’ll want a contract with Gov. to repay the ‘money’ with interest this will take the form of numerous bonds for various amounts which the Gov. will have to redeem, meanwhile these sit in the bank, along with the ‘money’ created for the project and are used as collateral to borrow more ‘money’ just as gold notes would be. Then the ‘money’ begins to move as work proceeds on the railroad but each payment always simply moves from one account inside the banking conglomerate to another though some does go out for the weekend as the labour force shops, but this is rarely more than 2% so even the money that the government borrowed spends most of it’s time in the bank being loaned out. Then once the railroad is finished the government has to reclaim it’s whole cost from the very people it payed to create it meanwhile the bankers will be spending money as fast as possible on every luxury they can imagine and some you can’t in order to try to keep the whole sham afloat. It’s clear from this simple illustration that the banks through fractional reserve lending will, if the government concedes the monopoly of creating ‘money’ to them have 9+ times the spending power of the Gov. You may feel this just doesn’t make sense, well it does if you’re a banker.
“The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled. With something so important, a deeper mystery seems only decent.”
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006), former professor of economics at Harvard, writing in ‘Money: Whence it came, where it went’ (1975).
Very important information from Pepe.
My take on the Reuters’ report: a top level Ministry of State Security finding directed to President Xi, and lets say, the Standing Committee, the other six, and even the Politburo, a group of 25, including the seven, is leaked? Not only leaked, but leaked in a timely fashion, very relevant to the news cycle of propaganda fomented against China and focused on the leadership and the functioning of the CCP?
The Tiananmen Papers were “leaked” 12 years after the event.
But we get this leaked Top-Top Secret report to Reuters with no hard copy, just whispers from “sources”.
I have 3000 bridges in China I’ll sell you, to paraphrase a cliche.
As for the BRI being slowed down, I think in the coming months, as COVID-19 recedes, each nation hit hard economically will beg the BRI (and the AIIB already is making big loans and grants to nations needing financial aid to deliver health care) to start, continue, finish the infrastructure projects and put their workers back into action, as the best stimulus to recover from the shutdowns and looming depression/recessions.
Beijing’s Global Health Silk Road is one other project that will have some resonance in poverty stricken nations.
Domestically, the New Infrastructure policy is already rolling out.
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-05-06/Getting-to-know-China-s-new-infrastructure-projects-QfIOLy9khq/index.html
It got tested during the crisis in Wuhan as the biggest, richest high tech corporations reacted to help supply China and most of the rest of the afflicted countries with masks, ventilators, PPEs, and medicines, and AI solutions to the epidemic and ways of healing.
The seamless interaction of big business, social need and government shows that the Chinese system works as intended. The New Infrastructure will power the domestic economy and make Made in China 2025 come alive.
Though the US will be cutting off investment in China, these big Chinese corporations, key players in China’s digital economy, are moving fast to propel China forward and ahead of US technology wherever it can.
As for the Sinophobia the WH and the battalion of Chinahawks in the Congress, State, CIA and Navy are spreading to create a Cold War 2.0, China’s leaders don’t need a secret report to hear and see the campaign directed against them. It’s front page, breaking news every day.
However, what the brain-dead Western mouthpieces don’t understand is the Chinese people hear and see the hatred as directed at them, directed as racism, as the return of the Yellow Peril syndrome and irrational Chinese Exclusion. They take it personally and nationally.
Please … The dollar system’s global corporatism is horrific yes. But China’s program isn’t for everyone either.
Once again … HOW … China “backs” it’s digital yuan with gold is the crux of the biscuit.
I said more about this in the last Pepe missive. So I will refrain from tedious repetition …
Stay healthy, and try to avoid the hive mind, no matter which extreme is offered.
The beautiful thing about the China “program” is that it is optional. No one has to adopt any facet of the China model. And no one does. They “buy” development with commodities China needs. They get access to China, some through FTZs (free trade zones). They get connected to other markets, some near, many far. Scores of nations like the option. China helps them to their feet. To stand and develop. The US should but it never has, without extracting a horrible price (Japan, Germany).
If you were addressing me about a hive mind, you don’t know me or my mind. The last thing I would associate with is a group or an ideology.
But I shall heed your good wishes for my health. Same to you.
Larchmonter445
What is basically happening is the Americas predatory liberal capitalism is being challenged by Russia and China, and the elites in Washington, New York and London don’t like it. Yes, they indeed have many sleepless nights. You eradicate predatory liberal capitalism and then the financial status of the elites is automatically challenged. For globalism to succeed, ie. for private banks and corporations to have a free hand, Russia and China need to be subdued. It has not happened, no matter what methods have been used, like the highly suspicious appearance of the corona virus.
Thanks, Mr. Escobar. Have you heard anything about the possibility of a corona tribunal, to potentially be held at the university in Novosibirsk, which would threaten to bare all the loads of collusion between elements within the US and the US-focused Chinese fifth column, which aimed, evidently, to weaponize a synthetic version of the SARS virus, using Gates cut-out funding at the Wuhan Lab, aimed at culling excess population of people over 65?
@JCasey
Get this !
https://www.nationofchange.org/2020/05/08/petition-to-investigate-bill-and-melinda-gates-reaches-over-half-a-million-signatures/
A petition calling on the federal government to investigate Bill and Melinda Gates for “crimes against humanity” surpassed half a million signatures since its creation on April 10. The “We the People” petition calls on Congress to investigate the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and said, “until a thorough and public inquiry is complete” they “are derelict in duty.”
The petition accused the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for “medical malpractice” citing an accusation of “intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines.” The petition also quoted Bill Gates’ when talking about his interest in “reducing population growth” by means of vaccinations.
I saw this petition and signed it immediately.
Maybe off-topic in this thread.
But I think must-sees are James Corbett’s investigations of Gates.
The latest:
https://www.corbettreport.com/gatesvaccine/
“Billl Gates’s Plan to Vaccinate the world.”
More TK, as they say in the news biz.
Katherine
What is also problematic is that America has decided to up the ante in SEA and are looking to place more weapons in the hands of the vassal states (Japan, SK, Taiwan, Australia, etc) to include new long range anti ship missiles to close the “missile gap” with China. Reuters just copied the propaganda given to them from the pentagon, whereas the pentagon and the chicken hawk neo cohens who run american foreign policy, look to be defeated again, this time in SEA.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-missiles-specialreport-us/special-report-u-s-rearms-to-nullify-chinas-missile-supremacy-idUSKBN22I1EQ
This is also a “Special Report,” as if US and anglozionist war mongering is new to the peoples of the area.
America should take care of matters at home and spend the 1.5 TRILLION a year, not on the military and the alphabet agencies but on being not a silk road but regular roads without pot holes, falling bridges, and hidey holes for the billionaire class.
As to trade and economic production in China, most westerns are not aware that alleviating poverty is a prime directive for the CCP and they have lifted millions out of poverty, while the west has but millions into poverty and shall continue to do so unabated. With those lifted out of poverty, China will build a huge middle class and shift production from an export model to one of internal consumption. I read this 15 years ago when Clyde Prestowitz proclaimed in his book 3 Billion New Capitalist A Shift of Wealth from West to East said that China will have 300 million internal consumers. That is the entire population of the US.
Also, the rest of the world is ready to do more business with China because war is only profitable to the warmongers.
Warren Buffet said don’t bet against America (of course right before he dropped all of his holding in all american airlines) but my bet and money is on China and the growth of the SEA countries. I am watching with special interest the gold back yuan as well. Anything to prevent the continued weaponization of the dollar against countries.
May the US fall gently and go to sleep without murdering everyone in the world.
As shown in this article, Americans are being prepared for a hot war with China:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2020/02/preparing-masses-for-hot-war-with-china.html
If China does not “toe America’s line in the sand”, Washington and, in particular, the Pentagon, is preparing itself for a hot war with China with the ultimate goal of reclaiming its post-World War II global preeminence despite its protestations that it does not seek conflict with the world’s most populous nation.
The US will have to be the aggressor. China won’t start any war.
And this isn’t 1964.
How does the war start in this. scenario you allude to?
Yes, the U.S. would have to be the aggressor. But they are the aggressor already. Their aggression never seems to sleep or end. It is a daily occurrence. We will have to wait and see what happens. Your reference to 1964 is the Gulf of Tonkin, right? And you don’t think they could repeat such an incident? The Anglo/American/Zio empire use false flags as a staple event in their toolbox of aggression. They have engineered virtually every conflict they entered in the 20th century.
The one thing that surprises and concerns me is that Russia tolerated and did not demand the removal of the missiles and biological labs threatening their borders. If it does come down to Russia and China negotiating with the west as a unit then part of any deal has to be the removal of all threats including the above and also foreign troops and hardware along their borders. These two countries and others really need to stop trying to soothe the beast and make some concrete demands. This is all just talk anyway. Those in control aren’t in a sharing mood and they don’t care who or how many are blown up to get what they want.
“The one thing that surprises and concerns me is that Russia tolerated and did not demand the removal of the missiles and biological labs threatening their borders.”
Maybe they didn’t demand this because they couldn’t make good on the demand.
OTOH perhaps it is a good idea to have the demand on the record.
??
Not being a trained diplomat or strategist, I don’t know.
It ‘s not as though the USA doesn’t know that it is being provocative.
Maybe planning a surprise is a better tactic.
Katherine
> Your reference to 1964 is the Gulf of Tonkin, right? And you don’t think they could repeat such an incident?
They can.
But, we are NOT in 1964.
Contrary to Vietnam, the was forced to fight in its own territory, China has the means to fight back at the hearth of the Empire; both economically and militarily.
And, the “we are not in 1964” stands also, but in a negative way, for the US army.
While in 1964 the US army was still able to operate in real war conditions; that isn’t the case anymore; the US army is too reliant on high technology gadgets right on the front line.
But if communications are cut (hint: China already successfully tested the ability to know down satellites),… the best option for US soldiers will be to surrender.
Of course, the US could escalate and launch missiles at Chinese cities… but so can China too.
So, in case of US-China war, there isn’t one side with overwhelming power; it will then be decided on resolution, will, discipline, cohesion…
The reactions to the new corona virus clearly show which society is able to stand, and prevail, war-like conditions; and which society is unable to do so.
In 1964 they thought they could win against Vietnam. There were objective reasons to think that, after all the odds were disproportionately on the side of the US. Yet, they lost.
But, in 2020, even thinking to be able to win against China is ridiculous.
US foreign policy is not winning in the conventional meaning of the word; it is about subjugation of other countries, particularly those with oil wealth and any tendency towards using socialism to raise the living standard of their general population, by whatever means necessary.
The first attempt is by bribing politicians to allow privatization of national assets. If that does does work, then they instigate a military coup and/or assassination to take over the levers of power to install a fascist puppet government beholden to Washington DC, so that the country is drained of its wealth. Failing that, then sanctions and trade embargoes are used to bring the country to its knees in an effort to instigate a violent popular uprising.
Then mercenaries are funded and armed in an effort to dislodge the existing government that refuses to cooperate. As a last resort, the bombing starts to in order destroy the country’s infrastructure, followed by invasion and dismemberment of its former governing bodies to fragment the country into warring factions.
And this is 1964 — “Remembering “A Time for Choosing”” Ronald Reagan
Key point: “… there is a price we will not pay, there is a point beyond which they must not advance… peace … we will not surrender for it now, or ever…” [3:46 / 4:16]
Now when are we going to hear the reply from Putin and/or Xi?
https://youtu.be/qXBswFfh6AY
[Btw, it is a fake Key Note and in fact derives from a campaign speech by Reagan televised in late October 1964, to promote Barry Goldwater’s campaign, and has morphed over history into the GOP convention keynote speech of 1964 — nonetheless, it sets the tone for the later rise of the Reagan-Thatcher (Ayn Rand) brand 40-year span of economic and democratic decay, the tail end flick of which is today’s 2020 unfolding.
See https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-myth-of-reagane28099s-gop-convention-speech-in-1964 ]
“More complex is the issue of Pentagon bioweapon labs in the former USSR – an issue also closely followed by Beijing. Moscow has identified a lab near Tblisi in Georgia, and 11 of them in Ukraine. And way back in 2014, when Crimea was reunited with Russia, scientists also found a lab in Simferopol.”
But those israeloamericans would never think of actually unleashing biowarfare against China or Russia…no, no, no, that would be dumb (according to a u.s. regime affiliated biowarfare wonk). All that lab investment has nothing to do with creating an active biowarfare element in zionazia’s wmd arsenal.
” …that the blame game against China over the virus is like the backlash over Tiananmen all over again.”
That statement by Reuters is for western consumption only. China would never reference Tiananmen Square on anything for circulation, period. They’re not even trying to make their propaganda believable anymore.
Very astute observation, @Currently Isolated in the Deep South.
When the event is mentioned, they say ‘4th June’, not ‘Tiananmen’.
I think that the central banksters are flat @$$ out of anything even remotely resembling actual money, and everyone is flipping out of their da#&@ minds about it.
BRI is a very good idea, and will obviously continue.
Everyone will have to come to their senses and start aiming for fair and even trade (for fair value).
That’s about it.
Why did the Covid epidemic suddenly end in China? Why did it not spread to other major cities like Beijing? Professor Wodarg, had a very interesting suggestion, they simply stopped testing and forgot about a disease that is no more deadly than influenza. Pretty neat trick. Only in China, where you can simply tell your people … ‘never mind’ and they say ‘OK’.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/07/watch-corona-crisis-what-really-happened-and-how-to-learn-from-it/
Just the flu, eh. LOL, off guardian, guardianista central. Not surprised they would be promoting israeli/zionazi policy for the “goy colonies”, which is what the flu hoax nonsense is.
emmm,this is what the US government doing now
> Why did the Covid epidemic suddenly end in China?
Maybe because the virus didn’t originated in China but was introduced in Wuhan;
by closing borders and cities, and testing everybody crossing, it was possible to identify the source of infection and stop its spreading.
China simply did the right thing.
(and it didn’t happen “suddenly”, it took 3-4 months, with all the resources of the first economy of the world in full “people’s war” mode).
SteveK9
Please check out the graph at 4:20 in this link…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJtH7Uw2e2A
…it shows the excess deaths for Britain compared to the five-year average. This is an unmitigated disaster which not only tells us that CV-19 related deaths are being massively under-reported, but also that they are more than double [55,700] the normal of 24,344 deaths.
This is the same pattern as in dozens of other countries around the world where misreporting is so commonplace. Total deaths, crude a measurement as this is, cuts through all the lies and agendas and tells us that something is terribly amiss…CV-19 is obviously vastly more deadly than influenza.
Please also go to the 34:00 mark where you will see that this virus is clearly not naturally occurring. This is another reason why it should never be taken lightly nor compared to influenza.
Trump and Bojo, apart from their similar looks and weird hair-dos, have something else in common…an initial cavalier and utterly irresponsible dismissive approach to the risks and a complete failure to implement any prudent strategy that could, early on in the outbreak, have helped to safeguard their countries from this virus.
The horse had long bolted before either of these idiots woke up and consequently, they have directly contributed to thousands of completely avoidable deaths.
In light of its terminal decline and the attendant implications, the US is spoiling for a fight with China, as China angles to displace it – but rest assured, China is equal to the task.
Below is a headline from the CCP’s mouthpiece, the Global Times :
China needs to increase its nuclear warheads to 1,000
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1187766.shtml
The author says; “…I always hope China and the US can get along with each other, but peaceful coexistence between the two countries is not a thing that can be begged for; it’s shaped by strategic tools. This is particularly true as we are facing an increasingly irrational US, which only believes in strength. We don’t have much time debating the need for increased nuclear warheads, we just need to accelerate the steps that make it happen.”
China is not going to sit back and allow the US to extort it and subject it to humiliation.
With its finger on the trigger of a Dongfeng-41 strategic missiles, China is loudly saying to the US, that is buoyed by arrogance and governed by fools :
“Go ahead punk, make my day”!!!
Selah
Brezhnev wanted to erase China in 1969 but could not get Nixon to assent and Kissinger went to Mao.
It now depends on how Putin feels about Covid-19 and other threats to his legacy inside Russia and what the MIC consider as threats from China.
Who knows what alliances will form post-Nov 2020 and how far China will be frozen out of world trade by tariffs and quotas.
@PaulGreenwood
The industrial capitalists have no problem with China, since they take advantage of their cheap labor and keep their profits out of the clutches of both the Chinese government and the US Internal Revenue Service by using offshore tax haven corporations as intermediaries. Apple is notable in this regard who have $250 billion stashed offshore.
The private banking mafia is a quite different kettle of fish, since their monopoly of money creation out of thin air in the US and EU with a wave of their magic wand is key to their wealth and to control governments by using bribery in the form of campaign contributions and revolving doors to support legislation that continually increases military spending to enforce their policy of world domination and control.