Four major events in a cluster, one to come this week.
The percipient point of view about China under Chairman Xi (more powerful than Mao, though far less charismatic) is that China will not retreat from its destiny.
Any notion that China would cave to Donald Trump’s demands in the Trade negotiations of the past year (yes it’s been a year with 11 face-to-face meetings of the highest level operatives on both sides, one step below Presidents for each team) is faulty thinking on two levels.
President Xi understands that Trump was setting him up for the Art of the Close. Trump wins by changing, demanding, insisting on winning any deal he makes. The Donald always takes the flesh with the blood. And he sometimes walks away until he gets the bone with the flesh. But those are business deals. Nothing in real estate development is necessary. Running the US economy within the Global interconnected economy is a completely different deal.
Trump is in this to come away a winner by forcing self-containment of China economically. If the deal on the table the Chinese just refused and left there had been accepted by President Xi, the Politburo in Zhongnanhai would have removed Xi from power. The Xi power is unlimited by Time. He’s there for life. But it is a System that leaves the Circuit Breaker of Wisdom and Ideological Foundation in the hands of the Politburo.
The moment came for the deal to be analyzed from a three-sixty spherical point of view. What would be the ramifications within the Chinese domestic situation, between the trade partners of China (USA, EU, Asian) and what would remain of the Supply Chains intrinsic to China’s development?
The demands by the Americans touched the nerve center of CCP power as rulers of PRC. It demanded laws be written (dictated by US in the deal) which would have been the weapons of enforcement triggering penalties for any backsliding by China. These laws would act the way the US dictates to the Yeltsin-Gorbachev administrations acted on the Russian economy and society. Those US advisements crippled the domestic development, led to the wealth rape by oligarchs and set in place the plethora of NGOs that have torn up the educational and scientific sectors of Russia, and they bought time and space for the Liberals to share power and operate as a Fifth Column, largely through the Media that massaged the masses into dreams of European splendor, US freedom and democracy, while drugging with alcohol and hard opiates the nation’s manpower into morbidity and stupor.
The Chinese saw a loss of their society, the second coming of the Opium culture, and corruption reversing all the anti-corruption efforts of the last decade. They studied hard for these last three decades the fall of the USSR. They understand how the ‘take down’ was engineered. The Chinese are great students. They play a strategy game of Go. Far more complex than Chess, mastered by few, but influenced by Time and Concentration. When the Chinese make a move, there are many moves more to come before your stones on the Goban are suddenly surrounded or trapped on the edges. White or Black, the Chinese understand strategy.
The deal on the table was a trap for Xi and the CCP and China as a rising power.
Evaluating the Trade Deal as a poison pill, the Politburo
called the Standing Committee and President Xi to begin a long-term plan of life without the USA.
China would de-couple from the International System that was being dismantled by Trump and was being rebuilt as Rule-based Order, the rules all coming from Washington to the whole world to obey. Trump didn’t begin this. He embraced it. This is the Hegemony of Unipolar governance. The ultimate deal Trump could have never dreamed of having a role in. He makes all the Rules and he always wins. This is why he has left the essence of MAGA, but throws the slogans around still. Making America Great Again is nonsense if America is on top and everyone else is a pawn. The ultimate Feudal system, a vertical power structure like his Trump Towers. But this is bigger, grander, more than a skyscraper could ever be. Unipolar Power went deep into Space. Its footprint on Earth is global, land or sea. The base of the Empire is Earth itself, controlled from Washington. Forever.
The Chinese saw that they alone could stop this eventuality.
They left the negotiations to be resumed, but on the table was a rejected plan. It won’t be revived.
They have produced a White Paper at the State Council level.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/download/20190602fulltext.doc
The White Paper lays out the history of the last year’s efforts and realities that display Trump’s tactics. All through the negotiations have been ‘missile strikes’ of sanctions and tariffs and legal moves against Huawei and ZTE. Conjoined with those blunt blows have been multiple thrusts of the US military toward separating Taiwan from China, legislation expanding US-Taiwan relations, vast new arms deals that go far beyond past red lines set by Beijing, and a propaganda machine in the world press and media demonizing China as a thieving culture run by human rights violators operating “concentration camps” for millions of Uyghurs, ruthlessly controlling Tibet and threatening naval commerce by building islands in the South China Sea and stealing every other nations gas and oil and all the fish the waters hold. Only good neighbor (from 8000 miles away) Uncle Sam can save the day for the poor folks of Asia.
So regularly, US naval warships slice the 12-mile limit, taunting a response from the PLAN’s vessels or maybe a crash of fishing vessels into the US Navy’s boats. Whatever US Navy can elicit to provide a trigger incident that would once-and-for-all paint Red China black.
This is the context geopolitically of the Trade Negotiations present status.
China now has set the rules that they demand. Trump won’t like them. Navarro and the warhawks and Sinophobes love the idea that China refuses to submit. They can reach into the tool kit of destabilization and begin the final effort to destroy the growth of China, truncate the economy, break the momentum of the BRI and Maritime Silk Road and Polar Silk Road, and make an outcast from the West of the Yellow Peril in Mao attire.
The White Paper comes on a weekend that was preceded by a Chinese military speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. At that event, which deals with mutual military and defense issues of the ASEAN nations and China, one of the State Council members who happens to be the Minister of National Defense of the PRC, General Wei Fenghe, delivered a speech that focused on China’s position in the South China Sea zone.
(Link is to the transcript.) http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1152730.shtml
The Dialogue conference concentrates on International Security Cooperation. General Wei had preceded his speech Saturday with a face-to-face meet up with Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.
Shanahan’s nomination approval has been held up by the Senate as they try to cope with his conflicts of interest involving Boeing, from whence he comes and for whom he would always favor. (We hear the term “recuse” again for all such conflicts of interest.)
General Wei delivered in person to Shanahan the no-uncertain rules of behavior China insists on for passage of US naval ships in the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait and East China Sea zones China claims. But he offered more contact and communication between militaries to defuse the situation. Shanahan responded by mud throwing as a good Sinophobe is meant to do, charging that China has militarized the South China Sea and is a bad neighbor who steals from other countries.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-7093467/US-warns-China-behaviour-Asian-neighbours.html
Then came the General’s speech at Singapore’s conference.
Meanwhile in Beijing the plan of de-coupling has begun. FedEx will be investigated for not shipping some packages of Chinese documents elsewhere in the world. Seems as though FedEx was obeying some CIA or State Dept. ‘suggestions’, but has since apologized to the Chinese for FedEx’s ‘error’ in not shipping the packages. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/china-investigates-fedex-huawei-cargo-121120258.html
So, there is now, like in the US Treasury and DOJ, a Beijing black list of American corporations and individuals. Tariffs in response to Trump’s tariffs are in place by China. The Trade War is on, engaged to withdraw US from China and by China to de-couple from the US. The task for China is monumental. They would need to find at least $350 billion in new markets. And they need to hold as much of the Supply Chain in China, through China or managed by China in the other nations (like Vietnam, where many Chinese-invested companies already exist).
Simultaneously, the Politburo has clearly signaled that war is the option if Taiwan attempts to separate from the PRC. Regardless of what the US Senate and the US military does within Taiwan, for Taiwan, or with Taiwan and the US alliance of Indo-Pacific nations hastily patched together to be the Pacific NATO, China will fight and take control of Taiwan. That policy is not a bluff. Taiwan will succumb to the PLA if it dares to formally break away. Bold Red Line.
Though China recognizes the USA as an Asia-Pacific nation, it clearly labels the USA as non-Asian, non-neighbor intruding in the Southeast, East and North East Asian waters and lands. It sees the US as military invader. It distinguishes the right of freedom of navigation from the Rule of Hegemony the US insists is its duty to Asia.
China is building a military that will be large enough to cope with 60-70% of the US military assets pivoted toward Beijing. Though China is a nuclear power, it is building a navy that will dwarf the US ship for ship. But its carrier groups will not equal US numbers for decades. The need is not there in any case to match carriers. The Islands in the South China Sea act as flattops should the need arise. What the Chinese do have is anti-ship missile capacity ever since 2010 when DF-21 was demonstrated. One missile ends one carrier. That truly has changed naval warfare potential. Russia has similar capabilities and so does Iran. And one might think that those short-range missiles from Pyongyang have the same target potential. So, cruising around with such big targets afloat for China, Russia and North Korea to so easily take out with one missile seems reckless to most. But the US Navy deeply believes the waters that touch the Asian nations are US property and they are determined to enforce that notion. The Rule of Hegemony is powerful elixir.
Two other events bracket these Chinese efforts of the White Paper and the General’s Speech. Earlier in May was a huge geo-cultural event, The Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations.
Read the press conference transcript and understand how this is the Chinese and President Xi’s way of communicating the philosophical basis for the BRI.
http://english.scio.gov.cn/pressroom/2019-05/10/content_74770323.htm
Connecting all the world’s civilizations and cultures is the historic stimulus for development. Some have forgotten this. History books often don’t relate this phenomenon. We know the Silk Road was about trade. We know the Phoenicians sailed the Mediterranean for trade. But we look past the integration processes when civilizations link up. It is often the most subtle of transformations, but deep, lasting bonds get established. Usually, each influences the other.
Hosted in Beijing, it presented like a small World Expo, an Asian exposition of the ancient and current civilizational developments and capabilities. The West has no such event. Mostly because Western Civilization has died. It now is merely transiting the period of decay like a cadaver left at room temperature.
But Asia is young, as young as today, and Asia is ancient, as old as any civilization on Earth. Several Asian Civilizations are continuums from ancient to today. And most have integrated aspects in China. Some have integrated Chinese elements within their nation’s culture. So, the exposition and dialogue was a manifestation of a reality that was already de-coupled from the West. In fact, outside Beijing, at the water’s edge of the landmass, was the prowling non-neighbor instigating for war. After all, what else does a Hegemon have to offer? It’s own civilization is dead and gone. It seeks to build nothing of use to Asia. It demands subservience. It writes the Rules of the game it wants to play. Go is gone. Obey is the play. You don’t even get stones to use. Your bowl is empty. Only the Hegemon makes the moves. All the stones are his.
And what the exposition and dialogue makes aware in the tens of thousands of attendees is the harmony and cooperation of the historical and present civilizations that encompass Asian peoples. Art, religion, inventions, music, horticulture, languages demonstrate the symphonic beauty of mankind, diverse and integrated. Awareness of what is common and what is unique. Most of all, the insight that God and Nature are universal and necessary. Ideology and politics disappear when civilization is the inspiration.
Finally, the coming week, in St. Petersburg President Xi will be the honored guest at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). He brings 30 business deals ready to sign between the trading partners, China-Russia, the Double Helix.
The Chinese delegation will be over one thousand officials and businesspersons. President Xi brings also a list of new responsibilities for Russia to assist China as it de-couples and accelerates the BRI and EAEU Eurasian Integration. This will be followed up at SCO summit meeting in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, June 13-14. http://summit.gov.kg/?lang=en
China has to get things moving economically and militarily. The US has transported 5000 ISIS-AQ fighters to the borderland of Russia and China at Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Soon, whatever number of Uyghurs who may survive the Idlib liquidation by Syrian and Russian operations will be moved to Afghanistan bordering Xinjiang and Pakistan. The US clearly will never cease operational capabilities in Afghanistan so it can rile China, Pakistan, Iran, and Russia from Central and South Asia. These matters must be dealt with by SCO anti-terror operations. The training has been years long, exercises more frequently. It is necessary now to act. Obviously, Russian commanders will set the operational plans. Whose forces will be blended is to be determined. But China has skin in the game and will share the burden of boots on the ground, as well as planes and missiles in the air.
War has come to Asia again. Trade War precipitates Military War. Hybrid War prepares the softening of the internal strengths of the target nations. China, like Russia, is now subject to all three forms of warfare. To avoid calamity, the Chinese are organizing a strategic retreat of de-coupling from the USA/West. Like Mao’s strategic retreat, Chairman Xi leads the moral crusade of patriotic repositioning. His dream of Eurasian Development must happen more swiftly. It cannot be a twenty-five to thirty years, culminating in 2049, the Centennial of the CCP’s establishment of New China, the PRC. The BRI has to connect all of Eurasia with all of Europe and Africa, and parts of Latin America. The goal is the same, the timeline has shortened.
President Xi has to keep his economy growing at 6+%, find new markets, prevent a military clash with the US directly, and hold Taiwan to the One China status, maintain stability in society, counter the Hybrid War and the vile Yellow Peril Sinophobia, and build new trusting relationships with nations fearful of an Asian Hegemon. Who better to advise and assist him than President Putin? He’s been through this wringer and has shown masterful techniques to hold Russia above the madness and capture the minds and some hearts of other peoples in regions around the globe. Russia inspires despite the destructive hybrid war it is facing. Civilization matters, I am sure Putin will tell him. Stick with your values as a civilization and the rest of the world will admire you. Act with full legal authority and with mutual consultation and consent, and you will succeed.
The Saint Petersburg visit will have the public speeches and actions to report, and the very private face-to-face strategizing between Xi and Putin. We will have the tea leaves to read when they are done. But we know where China is heading. Its Plan B is de-coupling. Some of that is from the American side, corporations who are moving out, pressured to go, enticed to come to other low-labor cost economies who want to duck out of the way of the tariff and trade limitations imposed, now, by both sides.
What we are witnessing is more than a Clash of Civilizations. We are seeing the dying of one dominant nation-state that has decayed from its own embrace of Liberalism and corporate capital’s dependence on war and military action with no end. DC corruption has led to the waste of tens of Trillions of Dollars, massive debt and derivative artificial growth, and total disregard of all traditional values that once was inspiration to the world. The USA lost its way and now brutalizes everyone, foe, friend or bystander. Everyone is a threat to this bully. And everyone can be used as a proxy, so the bully, himself, does not have to bleed too much.
The dying USA is taking the corrupted Europeans with it. Like a pandemic, its rot will take down those closest to it. This great tragedy has no precedent. Empires die. Hegemons falter and crash like statues pulled down in revolutions. But a dominant nation, committing all Cardinal Sins, has no future but a miracle. List the symptoms that became the killing vices. Pride, Greed, Impurity, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, Laziness. We see these everyday in our leaders, our institutions, our role models, our managers, our preachers, our exemplars, and doubly tragic, our children. America has becomes a hopeless case. Half of it is gone. In ten more years, it will be in need of hospice care. How much of the rest of the world will it infect before it ceases to influence beyond its own borders?
Whatever happens to the USA, China has opted to go back to basics. If somehow the US leadership snaps out of its mindset, reforms its motivations and sees itself as part of the whole instead of the only important whole, then it will meet China and Russia and Eurasia and the rest of humanity that has joined hands to make a new world on a green planet with blue seas and a philosophy of life instead of an ideology of death.
China shall lead where it can, help who it can, remain true to its values, compete with competitors, enchant its visitors, promote the young from everywhere, assist the elderly wherever they may need assistance, and smile for they have found a path that harms no one. Never in the history of the world has a wealthy nation offered its riches to build up the poor and hungry while still developing a system that elevates all its own hundreds of millions of rural and urban poor to a decent standard of living. China is ahead of its time. While it still can inspire, it has chosen to do so. Some see a connivance behind the endeavor. Others see the civilization behind the nation. It is a rich heterogeneous amalgam of peoples itself. So all people are brothers and sisters and not necessarily comrades. Just family.
Leaving the North American morgue and smelling the fresh Asian air blowing across the Pacific and inter-island seas has changed the outlook in Beijing. “To thine own self be true. This above all.” Shakespeare wrote it large, and China has heeded it.
—Larchmonter445
###
What a stunning treatise on the current world situation!
What we are seeing is something almost unbelievable a scant decade ago, the demise of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen. To me, growing up and being educated in this empire and believing deeply the tenants of The Empire instilled in me almost from birth only to feel those tenants turn to ashes in my mouth thirty years ago, I am watching the slow but ever increasing speed of the crash. I don’t think this end will happen in my lifetime, what time I have left, but very many of you will.
I don’t like what I see, I don’t like it at all, but reality is reality and the Tenants that USA was formed and matured under are dead and gone. It is incredible for me to see what is happening, the very fact the Empire has devolved in to a murderous killing machine that has no morals and stooping to threatening any and all with massive ‘sanctions’, read economic war, and openly threatening, and using all to often, military force to enforce it’s demands.
But this time The Empire has met it’s match. First Russia snatched Victory from the very clutches of The Empire in Syria and turned their ‘war’ in to a crushing military, and psychological, defeat. Next was the ongoing ‘crisis’ with Iran and of this moment it looks like Iran has faced The Empire down to the point Empire is ‘willing to negotiate with no preconditions’ with Iran in regards to the ‘crisis’. Some ‘crisis’, fomented 100% in the bowels of the beast in Langley against a country that can, and will, fight back to the bitter end.
Now, in the last few weeks The Empire has, in addition to an ongoing war with Russia, one of two countries on this rock hurtling through space that can turn The Empire in to a smoldering heap of ruin in minutes, has turned on the economic powerhouse that has kept The Empire in cheap goods for three decades and more and has virtually, no not ‘virtually’ but in reality, demanded the unconditional surrender of China.
This demand in and of itself shows the incredibly deep lack of knowledge of both Chinese and Russian Culture. How foolish, no, let me get realistic, how stupud, can one be to virtually throw the other two major powers on this Earth together by putting them under unconditional and unremitting economic and cultural attack?
It boggles the mind that anyone on Foggy Bottom would even consider such an act, but here that act is laid out in clinical detail by Larchmonter in a treatise the likes of which I’ve never seen. I advise reading Larchmonter’s masterpiece twice before you reply, I did.
Auslander
Author
Never The Last One https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZGCY8KK A deep look in to Russia, her culture and her Armed Forces, in essence a look at the emergence of Russian Federation.
An Incident On Simonka https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01ERKH3IU March 2014. NATO is invited to leave Sevastopol one way or the other, a harbinger of what is to come for The Empire.
Thank you Larchmonter for an excellent and very important piece. As you suggested Auslander – read twice :) .
Reading the link you provided of the speech at the 18th Shangri-La Dialogue by Gen. Wei Fenghe – is essential reading with your article. It outlines such a clear and concise look at the world and how we should all interact with each other on different levels. It also touched on historical injustices. (The white paper was taking time to upload – so I may come back with further comment).
Understanding culture is an often overlooked but very important part that the US mindset neglects, (just like forcing a “United States of Europe” that will not happen… we see now the disintegration of the current European Union as countries, peoples and cultures push back).
You see the sudden A-Z push back in Syria within the last 48 hours with attacks on the Syrian Army by Netanyahu and Co. More signs of desperation – trying to provoke conflict and drag the US into war. The debacle in Kosovo last week – a NATO/US attempt to start another war in the Balkans. A dying empire seeking more death and destruction.
The rest of the world is growing tired and wants peace and fairness. The US’s reputation is diminishing all over the world. People want change and a different multi-polar world. The changes are happening quicker – with China and Russia in the driving seat – guiding/helping those who want to break free to a new way of living with respect for sovereignty, culture and based on international law.
Auslander
An excellent article by Larchmonter445. He nailed it as it is.
The point is that currently the US is replicating the history of ancient Rome. The nobility controlled the plebs. In the US the banks and corporations control the “sheep”, as they call the ordinary people. This imperial attitude is being exported, with the US having the audacity to demand that China change it’s economic policies and give the US banks and corporations a free hand, basically replicating the situation in Russia under Yeltsin. It will never happen. What will happen is that the US will implode financially and socially, and after that politically. Commentators are warning of a civil war in the US. No, the 1861 -1865 type of civil war will not be repeated. What will happen will be severe social disturbances resembling a civil war. I don’t think the country will survive as one entity. It will almost certainly break up.
I lived in the US on two occasions. During my first stay, the country looked O.K. I returned after 20 years and was astonished with what I saw. Roads breaking up, bridges breaking up, a despondent population, etc. I left in 2007. I don’t think the situation improved at all, probably getting worse.
How will all of this end ? Depends how desperate the banks and corporations are, namely the elite. What is dangerous here is the fact that the elite is incapable of grasping reality, still living in the past, thinking it can do anything it pleases. It could do something very foolish, like starting a wider war, thinking it can win. All it will do is drive the rest of the world away from the US.
The USA became a colony after about 1948, culminating in full Sabbat Goy political bondage after the USS Liberty atrocity. Then the abrogation of Bretton Woods in 1971, and the move to a fiat currency, backed by nothing much more than the ‘good faith’ of the US Government (the best ever definition of a nullity ever conceived)financialised the US economy, to the tremendous advantage of the ruling elites, and the Jewish financial elites in particular. 9/11 merely reinforced the subjugation to Israel and the billionaire sayanim. And with Israel, the ghost in the machine, going barking mad itself since the First Intifada in 1987, and now run by a coalescence of Talmudist religious fanatics, and secular fascists like Bennett and Lieberman, with society fissuring against itself, and only contempt for the goyim and hatred for the Palestinians keeping the hideous mess from exploding, the USA is like a rotting zombie with a brain infected by parasite that is, itself, bent on nothing much more than destruction. The more the better. Indeed, for religious psychopaths like Pence, Pompeo and the ‘Christian Zionists’, ultimate destruction is their dearest wish.
you left the US just before it started deteriorating even more rapidly.
I lived there from 2006 up until about a year and a half ago.
It was in 2008 that even the most manic and deluded of American cheer leaders realized their country is not at all what they have been so thoroughly brainwashed to believe it was. I remember seeing people so worried they were almost crying. Lots of very depressed people turned against each other and themselves.
Many more homeless, dirt-poor veterans etc (injecting heroin) all over the place – their number is increasing at a very rapid rate every day.
Much more social-disconnect, more fake everything (not just friendships).
More materialistic, less humane, more psychopathic and psycho-enabling etc
Plus the homeless are getting increasingly violent
Everyone I know wants to leave
It’s rapidly becoming a real totalitarian, dystopian shithole
Yes, tomo, but it’s all Russia’s fault. As one fakestream media presstitute psychopath observed in its delirium this week, the Russians ‘hacked American’s minds’ (with puppy photos!!)into voting for Trump. AND, they set Americans against each other. The horror! Without the evil psychic sabotage of the Russkies, Americans would be living in peace and social amity and selfless charity and brotherly love, just like they used to do in……well, sometime in the Leave it to Beaver past. If the Septics believe this tripe, then they are even more mad than I imagined.
Great right up!
I remember in my young climbing days when China first started to open up, I was on an expedition to MT Kongur
China had no cars on the roads only bikes. I spent a year climbing and then working in the out back of Australia.
I was by the end sure the US was the place to live.
In the 90s we lived in Taiwan, I was pretty sure the US was becoming an Oligarch.
We got home in time for 9-11, the I new we were doomed.
I do mostly environmental work and I am on campuses a lot, this is after working in politics for many years.
There is no point in working in politics it is so massively corrupt, right down to the local city councils.
What is really sad is seeing the corruption, right down to the Public Universities. They have been losing funding from their states and federal dollars are not there, so they go to corporate dollars, or football. They build fancy dorms, workout facilities dinning facilities, to attract rich students. They try and recruit Chinese and Saudis to fund all this. The funny thing at my local Uni is they are losing these students because of Trump. So our Uni is upping tuition by 10% for in state after 6% last year, bringing the tuition to just below where the tuition of the private school my daughter works at! They have Lost well over 20% of their foreign students and they are losing in state as well! They are building a new track, new science building and 3 other buildings. So the corruption goes through every aspect of America.
I also grew up with the exceptionalism we were indoctrinated and once the gate opens to that knowledge you can never go back.
I don’t know what the future will look like for my kids and us for that matter?
Auslander: I echo your views, and appreciation of Larchmonter’s essay.
But don’t be pessimistic; events are cascading out of control ever more quickly, and you may well see the Hegemon put well and truly in its place.
Auslander, I feel the same way you do – well articulated!
(for future reference, the correct word in this context is ‘tenet’ v. ‘tenant’)
Well done, Larchmonter445, well done.
:)
Thanks Larchmonter445. It has been years that I’ve watched the situation and saw efforts by both China and Russia to ‘let the US down slowly’. That strategy is now picking up speed, because of necessity. Here is an opinion today in the Chinese Global Times (after the white paper was released) that again illustrates exactly what you say, with less detail. The Chinese is spelling out with clarity where they are, and each time they refer to the world. In the Chinese press, more and more we see the notion that China now position between the Hegemon and the world. We saw that from Russia as well – most recently with Venezuela – intervention so that hegemon cannot move.
“Washington has swayed public opinion against China in the trade dispute which is of Washington’s own making. Taking advantage of its ability to influence international discourse, the US has kept misleading the public with distorted information. The US even used lies to try to shift the blame onto China. The white paper, which contains authentic data, has revealed the truth and ensured a correct understanding of the facts.
It is beyond doubt that the US must take full responsibility for the state of current China-US relations. Over the past year, Washington has demonstrated to the world what it would do to implement its “America first” policy: It has thrown punches at its biggest trade partner, acted ruthlessly against a private enterprise on groundless charges, ignored international ethics and rules, and even schemed against its neighbors and allies. The US is now losing the moral high ground it had painstakingly built up and is stirring up trouble everywhere.
It is regretful and worrisome to see how the US has changed. As a superpower for years, the US should have had a global view. However, selfishness and parochialism have lashed American society, chipping away at reason and wisdom. With such disposition, the US would be a potently destructive power for the whole world. Hence, it is extremely urgent and vital to calm it down and sober it up.
The white paper points out that the US-provoked trade friction has also hurt its own interests. By threatening, intimidating, coercion and deceiving, Washington has gained some petty advantages in the short term. But compared to its total loss, such short-term gain is meaningless.
What China is safeguarding and defending are not only China’s actual interests and development rights, but more importantly, the global industrial chain, as well as international morality, principles and order. The US is transforming from a founder into a saboteur of global morality, principles and order. Being the most powerful country cannot justify and legitimize its irresponsibility. China’s resistance to US trade bullying has a worldwide and historical significance. The defensive line built by China can in fact shield many other countries.
This is a great contest between isolation and opening-up, between unilateralism and multilateralism, between free trade and protection, between fraud and integrity, and between parochialism and a broad outlook. This unprecedented game in human history is equally soul-stirring even if without guns. It is reshaping China-US ties and both sides’ recognition of themselves and each other. It is even reshaping the international system, directly affecting the future of mankind.
Not much wisdom or complicated research is needed to judge such contest. The only things it needs are courage and integrity. Few countries have echoed Washington since the China-US trade disputes began. This very fact speaks for itself. Certain countries did stay silent probably out of selfishness, snobbery or fear, but silence does not amount to agreement. An increasing number of nations are now bluntly criticizing the US.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1152839.shtml
So, we see a speeded up implementation of the multi-polar world, although the US will join later, much later, because they will have to.
Thanks for the Global Times link.
The successor states to the USA will be welcome-but not Gilead.
…”Trump is in this to come away a winner by forcing self-containment of China economically.”…
This clown is not the smartie in the bag to full fill this outcome. He is a wrestler kaye fabe actor. The lines were shown to him backstage and he is told to perform. Period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayfabe
He is not brighter than the other actors hired on.
I like it!
thanks
And on it goes, from Mish Shedlock, and right on again,
…”Three Key Points,
There can no longer be any doubt that Trump reacts emotionally, not logically.
Trump is not playing some amazing 3-D mind game, he is an economically illiterate trade fool.
Trump just proved to the world that no deal is safe, even deals he negotiates himself.”…
https://www.checkpointasia.net/after-mexico-tarrifs-no-agreement-with-trump-is-worth-the-paper-its-written-on/
P.S. The image is from a WWF wrestling ring match, kayfabe!
Yep-Trump is MAD, Pence and Pompeo and Bolton PURE EVIL, Pelosi dementing in unlovely haste and, who comes next in the hierarchy? McConnell? In between the moments of existential worry, the Chinese must piss themselves laughing. I wonder how much Rachel Madcow, with her strange facial twitchings and bizarre cranial movements, like a ventriloquist’s dummy with a golem operator inside trying to control the operation, but failing as his clay fingers cannot grasp the levers properly, they can take? Who at the Central Committee Research Group on Western Insanity is forced to watch US television to get some idea of just how and where, and to what maniacal end, the US elites are going raving mad? Do they draw straws?
Larchmonter445 thoroughly covered the big picture. Well done.
The US is putting all its energy into greater crisis and failure, the fate of fascist rogue states.
That the US/NATO still thinks it can subdue or defeat the coalescing multifarious East is a symptom of insanity.
I don’t see how this can end well. Trump and associates are going after Mexico over migration, India over trade, Germany (and the UK) over Huawei (and Nordstream), China (and Russia) over everything, Iran under the gun, Turkey over S400, making trouble in Syria, re-mapping the Golan Heights, circumventing congress to sell more arms for the Yemen war, doing who knows what in Africa …. I know I am leaving many, many things out…
Under Bush II it was “you are either with us or against us”, now it’s “either you do what we say or we will destroy you”. Psychopathic.
Everywhere the ‘natives’ are growing restless. Malaysia is complaining about the MH17 investigation. The Italians are talking about a parallel currency. The whole of Europe is in a fuddle over Brexit, the yellow vest protests, and the EU parliamentary elections…
I am not young but I can’t recall such a state of affairs.
What will be the trigger for the first bullet?
Great article. I lived in Japan in the eighties and it was the same basic approach. The Americans totally ignored Japanese religion, language and culture and demanded it magically turn into a western nation overnight. The US is taking the same approach to China which naturally is failing abysmally .Especially with the Opium Wars under the rhetoric of “Free trade”, China is dubious of US.The US has so many problems now that it has lost the soft power it once had. Incompetent businesses, drug addiction, massive numbers of homeless people. the government and media lying constantly on almost every issue. The US Nationalists have a hard time dealing with all the problems and prefer living in a fantasy world.
Japan is an occupied One Party state, so they had no choice. China does. The USA goes down, taking its bitch, the failed semi-theocracy of Austfailia, down with it. Our PM, Morriscum, who boasts of his ‘success’ in driving refugee children mad and to suicide attempts in indefinite detention in tropical internment camps, yet still calls himself a ‘Christian’ (a Pentecostal, the same breed as Bolsanaro in Brazil, another fascist)is visiting the Solomon Islands. There is and long has been much racist screeching in our 100% Sinophobic sewer media about China and South Pacific states co-operating, which is seen as a threat to our White Man’s Burden to keep the brown and yellow lesser races in their place.
So the Great White Boss travels to the Solomons, and lets the natives know that they must continue to recognise Taiwan, not China, or the Great White Boss will be angry. Our Boss, of course, is merely transmitting orders from the Big Boss in Thanatopolis DC, as ever. So, two countries who themselves recognise China, are ordering the ‘savages’, as the Pacific Islanders are known in ruling circles, to do the opposite of what they do themselves. And, naturally, as day follows night, not one fakestream media presstitute even seems to recognise the appalling, racist, contemptuous hypocrisy of it all, let alone criticise it. No, all you hear is enthusiastic gibbering, admiring of Morriscum’s ‘standing up to China’.
It will be interesting to see what the Austfalian media tarts have to say when China puts it’s order book in the bottom of the bottom drawer. When that happens Austfalia’s economic strategy as writ by the Scomo govt will sit on the table like dollop of cat vomit on the living room rug.
I live in Tasmania and I see an economy that is constructed entirely on producing stuff to sell to Asians. From dairy, through timber/woodchips/logs to minerals and the machines to mine them, and all manner of niche primary products like sea food, wasabi, vegetables, all these producers depend on China, and its Asian siblings to buy, buy, buy.
There are individuals in the Scomo govt that recognise the vulnerability that comes with our witless adherence to the hegemonic insanity, but their voices are muted, and their conviction toward a non polar paradigm is far from complete.
Interesting times are coming our way.
The Chinese will hold off punishing us for our racist duplicity, in selling them tens of billions of stuff every year, while spitting in their faces with glee. The sheer racist fury of the Sinophobes, and their lying hypocrisy, is a wonder to behold. Making ourselves a base for the US plans to strangle China or from which to attack it is madness, but the entire political establishment is so totally controlled by the USA and its ‘best buddy’, Israel, that not one political invertebrate dare criticise it. The latest gibberish that I have heard is the lunatic assertion that it was Austfailia that alerted the USA to the ‘dangers’ of Huawei gear. In fact the war on Huawei and China’s technological rise has been plotted for years, and our ‘intelligence’ agencies and think-tanks are wholly owned and controlled subsidiaries of the USA and US MIC corporations, who do NOTHING without the nod from Thanatopolis DC. Still, there are silver linings. When the full details of the intelligence conspiracy against Trump are revealed, the loathsome Alexander Downer may very well be in trouble for his role in setting up Papadopoulos and ‘alerting’ US intelligence to ‘Russian meddling’ that they themselves invented as a weapon against Trump and Russia. The thought of Downer in the Big House, preferably in solitary, warms the cockles of my heart.
Well it looks like I was misinformed. Morriscum has, amazingly, refused to bully the Solomons into sticking with Taipei. He has noted, correctly, that it is the Solomons business, not Austfailia’s. I am gob-smacked, but it does raise interesting questions about the fakestream media. My ‘source’ was rather certain that Morriscum was going to lean on the Solomons, so that was either a lie designed to pressure Morriscum, or simply presstitute incompetence, or the Solomons told Morriscum where to shove it. We shall see.
perhaps the visuals of chinese warships in Sydney Harbour did the trick?
And wasn’t the hateful, paranoid, screeching by the professional Sinophobes concerning the friendly visit of the Chinese Navy simply deranged? It was made to appear, by the fanatic China-haters at the ABC and ASPI (financed by Lockheed and Raytheon among others)as if the Chinese had arrived unexpected from out of nowhere, to threaten and intimidate us in their devilish, ‘Yellow Peril’, manner. That it was an arranged reciprocal visit after one made by the Australian Navy in China, was, more or less, ignored. Good God, this is a vile and vicious dystopia, growing more foul every day.
Truely something else
Thumbs up for the article, Comrade :)
Appreciated, sir. Especially from such a source. Thank you.
About the only thing I can add is a quote from a TV program, Babylon 5, written by J. Michael Straczynski, about some similar insanity:
“Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots would fight a war on twelve fronts.”
Amazing! Thank you Larch and Saker.
We are all indebted to you Larchmonter for the concept of the “double helix”, and for this essay. Thank you so very much. It confirms a few ideas I had floating around, and added new ones, a brilliant synthesis.
I think next week will be very interesting.
Thank you Larchmonter. Again you give me hope from your wisdom, knowledge and insight shared. Not hope for this country, this disgrace. But hope for those nations that have suffered from the evil dispensed from here. I so appreciate your work. Thank you again so sincerely.
Larchmonter445,
thank you for this. i will read it again tomorrow. I know nothing of you personally other than enjoying your commentary on this site, however the depth of your words and the embrace of the planet and all its people in those words strikes a chord within myself that native people here in the americas also strike when we communicate among ourselves.
be blessed.
Thank you Larchmonter for this insightful report.
Down under in Oz our government is tasked with ‘containing China’s influence’ in the South China Sea and Pacific region. Everyday something negative is written about China’s malign behaviour in the region.
Our newly elected PM just this past weekend visited the Solomon Islands and pledged $250 million to counter China.
The Solomon Islands and their neighbouring small islands have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, so Oz is trying to use them to against China.
Funny though, today a group of Chinese warships visit Sydney Harbour. Plus our universities would not survive without the huge fees from Chinese students.
But Oz has to obey it’s Master and slink around like a wild dingo ready to snatch scraps from the campsite.
@Babushka in Oz
mate, whats the sentiment like in the general public? the east and the west Aus? I remember the political climate was hostile back then when I left… and China Town was the part where no whites should ever go there… and all the shops and shares that has any hint of chinese ware smashed…
If you have some time, do share what’s going on there… given the USSA-elect PM swap-in-swap-out is a puppet show and JOKE now… btw arent we still ‘property’ under the queen mother? Legally? HA :D If I go back I goto the mountain ranges somewhere in Tassie :) I will still find animals there running around wearing fur! I sincerely hope Aus will come back to be the the GREAT SOUTH LAND!
reply to ?
Aust-Chinese political relations are on a roller coaster and catch 22 situation.
China is our biggest trade partner, but we also have to obey our big boss with orange hair. So we play a balancing act between the two.
For people on the street:
We love Chinese food and Yum Cha. Every town, even in remote areas, has a Chinese restaurant.
We celebrate Chinese New Year.
China Town in Sydney is a very busy tourist attraction and safe place.
My grandkids all have Chinese school friends, and have to compete for positions in computing classes and musical performances, but not on the sports fields.
Overall, the mood is good, providing you don’t get sucked into reading the Murdock press.
Not to mention that many Australian-Russians are born and lived in China!
Did you hear the ABC radio coverage of the Chinese navy’s arrival? The hysteria was, as ever, deranged. You would have thought that the fleet had emerged from out of the mist, unannounced and threatening. Apparently, as far as the Howardite and Murdochite robopaths that infect the corpse of the former ABC are concerned, even a visit, obviously planned by both sides, as such things are, is still a reason to hiss and hyperventilate against the despised ‘Yellow Peril’. Just last week they were waxing demented that Austfailian ships had been intercepted by the Chinese Navy in the South China Sea. Just why they were sailing right off China’s coast is never questioned-that is a Whiteman’s Right, by dint of racial and cultural superiority, and must never be questioned. The arrival of Chinese ships in the Tasman Sea, to guarantee ‘freedom of navigation’ would, of course, bring a truly psychopathic reaction. That the captain of one Austfailian vessel reported the encounter as ‘friendly and routine’ and the Chinese ‘good blokes and professional’ makes no difference when fear and hatred are being fostered. And it’s Tian An Men Square Week, too, time for the yearly orgy of Sinophobic lies and hypocrisy. The ABC sewer always leads the way.
Brilliant essay, Larchmonter. Still exploring your links.
I think your sense of the quickening is the correct take.
As a westerner, I find great comfort to know that, in the failing of the west, Asia itself will carry on the work and life of the world. I can’t think of better hands
I send many thanks, and much admiration for this.
Larchmonter445
Thank you.
I will share your writing with family and friends.
LM
I am almost speechless with a mixture of admiration and exhilaration after reading this article…I will simply respond with one word…Epic!!!
Cheers and thanks from the south seas.
Col
PS Perhaps there is some light at the end of the tunnel after all.
thanks Larchmonter – really great essay
Excellent article and precise.
We see what Washington does in South America.
The local hegemonic media group creates fake allegations of corruption and a corrupt justice system follows up with never ending prosecutions (Lawfare 2.0). Lula in Brazil imprisoned, Correa in Ecuador chased to exile, Kirchner battling 11 fake court proceedings in Argentina.
Where the US agents/traitors come to power (Argentina/Macri) the country is brought to enslavement by debt.
Argentina took 55B from the IMF and 100B from the markets in two years, allowing the oligarchy to take this money to offshore accounts and forcing the nation to repay this money under genocidal austerity conditions.
How do we get out of this in South America?
It is simple:The Sun rises in the East, just watch the morning and your path will be bright.
Cheers from France.
“List the symptoms that became the killing vices. Pride, Greed, Impurity, Envy, Gluttony, Anger, Laziness.”
That is only the limited Christian 7.
The full set of 9 also includes “fear” and “deceit”, which one might notice are very much at the core of the current USA cultural systems.
“President Xi has to keep his economy growing at 6+%”
Valuable insights in this piece, L. Thanks. However, your statement quoted above can’t go unremarked.
China, like everywhere else on this planet, is fully in the grip of The (non-negotiable) Limits To Growth; limits which are now making themselves felt as geo-eco-physical imperatives that simply can’t be ducked by any state anywhere. Including China. None of us have any option about that. If China/Russia and their BRI/EEU/Silk Roads associates manage to continue heavy economic growth even for a short while longer – and it will be short – they will now have to do so as the winners in a global zero-sum game, feeding off the collapse and dissolution of the Anglozionist empire – which of course includes its grovelling-underling provinces in Europe.
As the Az-empire collapses, its demand for the world’s commodities and resources will collapse at the same time, leaving the BRI-onboard states to scavenge the detritus. That will be the only remaining source to sustain the fading mirage of growthforever. And it won’t last for long, even without the rapacious greed of the Az-empire still making its inordinate demands.
After that, we shall ALL be facing the hard Limits; whether we agree to do so or not. As suggested above, these are non-negotiable. Mam Gais is imposing them (She’s already begun!) whether we like it or not, whether we cooperate or not. Forget hyperprosperity for all seven-plus billion of the planet’s human population, courtesy of the enlightened overlordship of the Russia-China BRI duopoly. That’s not going to happen. (It’s not even physically possible.)
What’s hoving up on the horizon – of the real world – is a new dark age; probably lasting several centuries, whilst Mam repairs and restores Her damaged ecosystems – and culls ludicrously-uppity Homo ‘Sapiens Sapiens’ (sic! LOLOLOL!) back to properly re-balanced numbers. Hint: it will be a LOT less than seven-plus billion. And the survivors will be living a whole lot less pretentiously.
Just like all the rest of us, China has no – literally zero – magic wand to side-step these geophysical imperatives. There is no such thing as ‘sustainable green growth’. Inherent oxymoron. Chinese subtle far-sightedness, impressive though it is, will not over-ride these reality-imperatives.
And btw, Startrekky techno-narcissism – as Jim Kunstler calls it – will not be coming to the rescue. When you look carefully, in intricate detail, with a cold eye, you see that its – alleged – ‘solutions’ don’t exist. Except in non-realisable sci-fi fantasies:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-28/techno-narcissism-hard-questions-ignored-answers
Your source is compromised as is your interpretation, if the meetings between russia and china were to speed up the bri timetable as the author stated, the short term growth rate(20 years say) would also have to increase rather than face your hard limits rate, isnt this so?
It is so that Kunstler and others talk about limitations and it is not a bad thing to keep in mind. But growth, and correct growth (as the Chinese population pulled themselves out by their bootstraps from a deeply impoverished society to a more affluent society) are two different things.
We can also look at this as humanity breaking out of old ‘limited’ models and beginning to flirt with new ideas. A model that is based on limitations is by definition a war and conquest model. What is going on here, is a pure growth model, systemic and maintainable.
So, perhaps we have to change our view on ‘growth’. Btw, I also question the 6% ‘growth’ as just perhaps our measuring systems will also change. At the moment, inflationary figures on currencies are reported with no food and gas taken into account. Any person will know that this is just foolish. Perhaps even our currencies will change. Our farming and food production is changing technologically at a speed that is staggering. Many more people get food from limited growing areas and highly automated inside growing. Keeping the current economical model static, will not show the changes. Arguably we’ve messed up the world with trash and pollution. But, we’ve not tried to work with the world and the earth. We do not know with any level of certainty whether there are limits, as the old warfare and conquest models harped on.
There is a reality reset coming here and the systemic changes are going to be vast, huge and are just about unpredictable. The ‘underlying war’ here is the systemic change from a debt model to an equity model. Somehow people understand equity much better than debt.
I agree with you re: the planet is going to deal with this and perhaps soon. As you indicate we are already over-populated and no one seems to be even thinking about curtailing population growth. Global warming is a symptom of over-population. We are already seeing the beginnings of mass migrations and this is just the beginning. But, as you say, it doesn’t matter one whit. The disaster is coming and it will be horrific no matter what we do. William H. McNeil in his book “Plagues and Peoples” has described this natural phenomena well. He also considers warfare a natural process for population control. Even China has reversed their one child policy which was the only organized attempt to address the problem. So, you can add that to the mix of the global crisis. Trump and his ilk are just symptoms of a growing problem in the US. We have seen a steady decline since Eisenhower. Trumps insane policies have a huge risk of actual nuclear warfare. At some point the entire world is going to have to face up to the reality that the US is an existential threat to humanity itself. Those in the EU that still suck at the teat of corruption from the US are going to have to change sides. The citizens of the servile nations that are dominated by the US and it’s over 1,00 overseas bases are going to have to rise up en masse and throw off the yoke of servitude the US is demanding of them. But, I fear the hegemonic Empire will strongly resist and we may all perish as a result. This is Fermi’s paradox in real time.
Curtail? Vaccines tainted (steralizing agents). Check. GMO foods. Check. Glycophospahates and dU. Check. Famines already on tap. Check. Wars for the taking of resources. Check. Sanctioned out of existance. Check. Abortions on demand, up to delivery (for those who forgot the morningafterpill). Check. Population control on slow burn, although, it might be faster to just nuke us all and let God sort it out.
No one need rise up. Take a page from Jesus, ‘refuse’ to deal with the charlitans. Why support the occupation/occupiers for personal gain. Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse to take part in the material scam. Oh, yeah and the most import part is to personally boycott any entity that does not meet one’s criteria of wholesome exchange. I ain’t been to the States in over forty years, that’s a very personal boycott. As for the aholes that spend money vacating there, did I mention aholes?
Jeez, Sean! Forgot the ‘morning after’ pill for nine months??!! Late term abortions are very, very, rare, and performed for precise medical reasons. The ‘let God sort them out’ bit comes from the genocide of the Cathars, does it not? They were my sort of Christians.
Please can everyone stay on topic. Thanks. Mod.
I hope you agree that the – hallucinated – huge further growth of Chinese/Russian and other BRI economies, it’s surely part of Larchmonter’s excellent essay. And it’s the stumbling block that’s going to cause all these rosy dreams of a world set free from USAmerican criminal lunacy to fade. That will happen, but not from lots and lots more economic growth forever in China, Russia and allies.
Amarynth says there’s: “growth, and correct growth”. LOL! Er – no. There’s just growth. And >anybrief< breathing space to begin to face up realistically to the appalling perfect global storm that the Synergistic Global Crises are now incubating.
Personally, I doubt that any of hom sap – Western, Chinese, Russian, any of us – have got what it takes to do the drastic course-change stuff that is now our only hope of at least mitigating (already too late to prevent) the planetary disasters and the inevitability-ensuing dark age which we've triggered by our blind un-wisdom. We shall, I fear, allow them to happen to us as inescapable fate, because we just can't raise the will, collectively, to do what is necessary. Fantasising, whilst the engulfing catastrophes roar towards us, is our preferred choice.
Shame.
At least you can't blame yeast for poisoning themselves helplessly to death. They don't know any better. But we do, cosmic fools that we are.
(Since everyone detests the bringer of really bad news, I will now go and shoot myself – not. :0) )
Are the moderators editing posts? There are several grammatical glitches in my posts, and some missing text. What gives?
(We don’t correct errors unless someone asks.If anything is removed because of a rule violation we would leave you a message in the comment.If there are serious violations your post is sent to Saker for review.MOD)
The world needs less consumption, production and pollution. Fewer people, consuming less and recycling everything in a circular economy, or whatever you want to call it. Which means humanely reducing population over a century or so through a demographic transition which requires wealth redistribution from the parasite thieves to the workers, the real and only true ‘wealth producers’. End poverty, and educate and emancipate women and family size falls. Even theocratic Iran managed it in one generation.
Then you must end, FOREVER, the cancer cult of capitalism with its inherent demand for eternal growth. The insatiably greedy must be indentified, removed from power, and their psychological and spiritual sickness treated. With luck genetic markers for such behaviour can be identified…..well there you go. I just lost the plot.
And there will be, if we survive, decades, probably centuries, of work to heal the planet, restore the forests, clean the oceans, restore biodiversity and clean up all the various sewages we have excreted in our frenzy of greedy destructiveness. Needless to say, you can achieve none of this under neoliberal neofeudal neofascism.
Thank you for that reality check. Yes, Mother Earth cannot provide abundance for billions of humans forever, and ever-exponentially growing each person’s standard of living.
I live in the Midwest of the USA, the breadbasket of the US. Millions of acres of farmland are under water, and more rain is expected.
What will we do if the crops fail? Just buy from Australia?
Oh, that’s right. Australia had crop failures this year, also.
No problem, we’ll just eat money. With 6% growth, there should be plenty of that.
I’m sure Russia would sell you some wheat from their bumper crop.
Larchmonter,
It is a very thorough report that provides deep insight into current Chinese situation. Deep State is hell bent on stopping the onward march of Chinese civilization. However, it is too late – like the ‘critical mass’ required for the chain reaction of atomic fission, Chinese economy has already gathered the critical mass for becoming domestic consumption based economy. The speed breakers put by Zionist Capitalist camp will make dent in GDP growth (may be up to 1.5%), but BRI has potential to make up.
Straight-Bat
If you consult your Torah/Old Testament you will see that the essence of Judaism and Judaised ‘Christianity’ (ie Pentecostalism, Christian Zionism, Dominionism, evangelism and other spiritual diseases of the soul)is xenophobic hatred of the other, and genocide (the oldest extant descriptions of the ways and means of exterminism, and open-ended demands by the Deity for its practise)and existential supremacism. The Chinese civilization, in contrast, older and at many times just as bloody (but mostly internally in internecine struggles)preaches ‘harmony’, and values it above all else. And ‘right behaviour’, whereas the neoliberal capitalist West most values greed and ‘competition’ ie the subjugation, exploitation, humiliation and mass murder if required, of the hated Other. A global civilization dominated by China, but with poles of power and civilization in India, Africa, Europe, Russia, Latin America would be vastly more beneficent than the Judeo-Christian West, which is plainly set on a policy of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ over every inch of the planet, forever (ie, as the ecological Holocaust quickens, a few more decades).
Truly a tour de force. Larchmonter, you have articulated how China learned the hard way from the Opium Wars and won’t ever allow that to happen againwhich would bad for China and bad for the whole world.
Even the Western public is doomed except possibly for a short time to the nefarious individuals who have orchestrated these horrors starting from 500 years of European/American colonialism/imperialism. In their hubris, they think they can escape, when the planet itself will burn to death, either more slowly due to collapsed, toxic environment, or in an hour in a nuclear war.
The fact that both Russia and China have managed to protect themselves while avoiding the designs of the warmakers is itself admirable, not to mention miraculous.
We are in World War III, in all ways but ‘kinetic’. One false step, and it could all be over.
It will take tremendous insight and skill on the part of both Russia and China to deflate the monster without causing too much damage.
Amazing article from Larchmonter445. Really great work!
I agree with your sentiments entirely.
Larchmonter makes 2 very important points:
1. Mentioning the chinese game of Go. It is very different to chess. In Go, the adversaries try to limit each others course of action until one player is completely immobilised. This explains the subtleties of the Chinese actions vis-a-vis the chest-thumping Westerners.
2. Describing the symbiotic relationship between Putin and Xi. Putin is definitely a role model for Xi. He came to power almost 10 years earlier (1999) while Xi was still a regional governor. Xi ascended to the central chinese committee in 2007. He was able to watch Putin deal with rabid western politicians, he saw Putin absorb the blows. Now it will be his turn. He has had a good teacher to prepare him for this.
Larchmonter, I leave you with: Nostradamus’ 1999 quatrain. He was a copycat astrologer but he did get some things right.
«L’an mil neuf cent nonante neuf sept mois, Du ciel viendra un grand Roi d’effrayeur Ressusciter le Grand Roi d’Angoulmois, Avant après Mars régner par bonheur»
Translation:
“In the year 1999, in the 7th month will come a great terrifying king from the sky/out of nowhere/ “. Putin came to power at that exact time between the two eclipses in July and August of 1999. He was nominated to his position out of the blue as if he “came from the sky”. And He is definitely terrifying to the west. (Nostradamus was French).
“He will resuscitate the great king of Monghols”. Does this refer to Xi? One king who came from nowhere (Putin) will give power to the other king of the “Monghols” (Xi)?
“Before and after Mars/ War/ will reign at will /at pleasure”. Putin came to power after NATO war on Serbia and this was followed by many other wars.
Be well Larchmonter!
A wonderfully insightful comment on the relationship of Putin and Xi, one mentoring the other in some ways.
Your analysis of Putin is important because it gives life to our assumption that he is “special” in terms of destiny and impact beyond Russia itself.
Thanks for contributing and expanding on the article.
Quite often your unique comments are gems to consider.
Prior to the visit tomorrow President Xi has touched upon his special relationship with VVP:
http://tass.com/world/1061701
Here is an extract – “…….We treat each other with respect, candor, understanding and trust. We share similar views on the international landscape and approaches to national governance,” Xi said. “We both shoulder historical responsibilities for national development and rejuvenation. Most importantly, we share a high degree of consensus on the strategic significance of the China-Russia relationship and therefore the same resolve and desire to deepen and sustain its growth……..”
Please also find below his interview with TASS about his visit to Russia and attendance to the SPIEF:
http://tass.com/world/1061613
I’ve been waiting for these words – a Unifying Call and who is the Terrorist now?
World should unite against US global economic terrorism
“Global financial markets are facing a stark wake-up call that they need to unite to stand against acts of what can only be described as economic terrorism by a country which unilaterally imposes its will on others and pursues its own goals at the cost of the interests of others.”
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1152979.shtml
The Chinese retort to that malignant pig-thug Pompeo’s monumental hypocrisy in criticising China over suppressing the prototype Colour Revolution in Beijing in 1989, was wonderfully honest and vigorous.
Beautiful essay and thank you! IMO getting the US into a place where martial law can be imposed is something that adds a bit of logic into the stupidity of our leadership. And in that context, thier tarrif santions against their No. 1 food supplier Mexico will go a long way toward acheiving that. As a logistics speciaist I can say that a 5% increase accross the board on the top end of the US food supply will translate into a 100% plus increase in the prices due logistics. Tech isn’t the only thing the Deep State offshored.;-)
Greetings from Hong Kong, China!
Thanks Larchmonter445 for an excellent article. I just have a minor quibble about it.
FedEx won’t be investigated “for not shipping some packages of Chinese documents elsewhere in the world”. What FedEx did and will be investigated for was (1) to divert to its headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee two packages that a Huawei office in Japan sent to China and (2) to try to divert two packages that a Huawei office in Vietnam sent to Hong Kong and Singapore.
Glenn Greenwald wrote in his book No Place to Hide that US intelligence agencies had secretly intercepted packages containing routers to plant backdoors in them.
Thanks for the specifics on the case. It makes my generalize comment more relevant. Glad you contributed those facts.
Best to Hong Kong.
What are your views on HK joining the Great Bay Area project? Lots of potential, but many issues to resolve.
In the long run, it will revitalize HK and stimulate the youth to join the future instead of being trapped in the static past. We see that dynamic in Taiwan, too. The ambitious went to the Mainland and reaped the rewards of success. The next wave of young on the island are distracted by the US yanking on the chain, making noise about an independent nation. Looks like thousands of HK youth are also distracted by politics. That’s a dead end career choice. They would have more influence and power and can impact the future by bringing HK back to prominence. Wealth is power also.
The West loves its compradores, from the execrable Liu Xiao-bo, who declared that China would require 300 years of Western tutelage before it became ‘civilized’, down. I’m just watching a couple on an ABC Drum Sinophobic hate-fest, where every guest is a Sinophobe, through and through. That’s the Free World for you.
Hi, Larchmonter445!
Your remarks about the Great Bay Area project, Hong Kong and Taiwan are quite right. Hong Kong’s future prosperity and solution of its current problems may very well be dependent on its joining the Great Bay Area project.
Let me write about the “independence” movement(s) that you referred to. The main movement is in Taiwan, where right now its political party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), is in power for the second time in history. I put “independence” in quotes because DPP isn’t really serious about building an independent nation. It is just serious about grabbing political power and staying in power. (I say so because anyone in their right mind knows that declaring Taiwanese independence means war with China, but if you read DPP propaganda it will tell you that China is poor, weak and can’t fight, or the US and Japan will come to Taiwan’s aid. No one in Taiwan is prepared to go to war with the People’s Liberation Army for an independent Taiwan.) After decades of De-Sinicization DPP has considerable support, but they were trounced in local elections last November. Maybe the Taiwanese people are waking up to the fact that DPP is leading them to a dead end.
I’m afraid more than a few thousands of Hong Kong youth are “distracted by politics”. The fifth column of the Empire is very powerful here, in the media, schools and universities, the legislatue and even the judiciary. It is working overtime to sabotage the Great Bay Area project and anything else that may benefit the city and the rest of China. They are supported by the DPP because in Taiwan Hong Kong is held up as an example against unification with China, so it is in the interest of the DPP to mess up Hong Kong as much as possible.
Taiwan and Hong Kong are similar because both were former colonies. They are small and increasingly marginalized parts of China. For people outside China they are probably good examples of the failure of decolonization and of battlefields of propaganda, ideological wars that the Empire wages.
I’m sorry to report that the fifth column is active and has made inroads in the rest of China, despite the stereotype of a strictly controlled media.
Thanks for the additional details. Facts really matter.
Amazing that Hong Kong never had democracy under the Brits, but under the PRC they do have democratic rights. Yet they yearn for the Empire to return and treat them like servants, a permanent underclass.
If Hong Kong was just a rock with no harbors, no ports, no maritime commercial value, the British and US wouldn’t care if the Hong Kongers were alive or dead. It’s the ports that the Imperials want.
The USA and its allies spend billions EVERY year on inciting and training and financing Chinese traitors and compradores, through the regime change organs the NED, IRI, IDI, the State Department, interfering, racist, ‘NGOs’, USAID etc, etc. These are pushing separatist movements in Xinjiang (including training Uighur butchers in Syria, (for future use in China), where these ‘freedom fighters’ have earned a deserved reputation for extreme viciousness, Tibet (led by the sixty year CIA asset, the Dalai)Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong and even, bizarrely, ‘Manchuria’ and Guangdong and Guangxi.
The plan, obviously, is to do to China what was done to Yugoslavia and the USSR. The bloodshed inevitably involved no doubt only excites the piranha in the USA and their racist stooges in the West. To ‘bring China down’ is the open ambition of both sides of the political sewer in Thanatopolis DC. Yet these scum, and the Western fakestream media presstitutes, screech and gibber, flinging propaganda faeces like uncouth juvenile chimpanzees, over non-existent ‘Russian meddling’ in THEIR precious politics and society. Has the omniverse ever seen such depraved and debased hypocrites?
Thank you Larchmonter.
Even the Viet Nam war was fought to contain China.
189. Draft Memorandum From Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Johnson
Washington, November 3, 1965.
SUBJECT
Courses of Action in Vietnam
We confront major policy decisions with respect to our course of action in Vietnam. This memorandum attempts to frame the substance of the choices and to identify some of the problems we face.
1. US strategy. The February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain Communist China. China—like Germany in 1917, like Germany in the West and Japan in the East in the late 30’s, and like the USSR in 1947—looms as a major power threatening to undercut our importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against us. The long-run US policy is based upon an instinctive understanding in our country that the peoples and resources of Asia could be effectively mobilized against us by China or by a Chinese coalition and that the potential weight of such a coalition could throw us on the defensive and threaten our security.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1964-68v03/d189
they do not know it of course, prolly never even suspected it..but there are people I strongly admire and envy for their strong intellects and the work they produce..whom I learn from and go to often envy or not.
Ron Unz is one such, so is the Saker. and in these pagers the comments of Mulga Mublebrain and Larchmonter 445.
lo and behold Larchmonter 445 now demonstrates that he is even greater than his commentary on issues raised by others, presenting a masterful piece of his own work, that will take me a couple of days at least to be able to comment intelligently on
thanks man. I feel so much better after reading this. you are reason why I come here too, along with those I listed and more, like Pepe for example
all the best.
and Mulga is Australian eh! interesting
Agree with ben. Great commentators.
Bravo. Outstanding insight and inspired writing. Prophetic.
I consider myself a fan of Larchmonter445, and unfortunately find his description of the US’s state of decay, and rogue-ish and bullying nature on the international stage as largely accurate.
However, I don’t get the sense that he has much insight into any sort of civilization continuity on the part of China, which has somehow magically persisted even through extreme suppression by the Communists, especially when Mao was in charge. Did Larchmonter445 somehow forget about the Cultural Revolution? I’ve worked in China, and was told that the Communist attempt to stamp out Confucianism failed because it was too deeply rooted in the Chinese soul. That is good news, but are the modern Communist leaders any more enlightened?
Larchmonter445 doesn’t comment on this, nor on the ubiquitous theft of intellectual property, as well as forced technology transfers common in China. Why doesn’t Larchmonter445 write an essay about the “social credit score” in China, and how that will play well with the best of Chinese civilizational values – as opposed to being used to bludgeon political freedom and free thinking? If the Communist party wants to preside over a nation of political coolies, taking the place of an Emporer, is that something to be applauded?
Regarding Taiwan, I see no argument presented as to why the Taiwanese should have less of a right to self-determination than the Crimeans.
On the plus side, I’m glad that China and Russia are cooperating to provide saner international leadership than the United States, and am a great fan of both Putin and Lavrov, having followed their magnificent efforts to save Syria from the takfiri monsters that the US helped afflict them with. IMNSHO, they both deserve Nobel peace prizes. I have read that the Chinese have asked the Russians for help developing their diplomatic capabilities, and good on them for that. I can only view the Russian influence on them as benign. If only we could follow the Chinese example, in this regard….
Finally, although I confess to not having studied whatever agreement that Trump and Xi had come to, I have a hard time believing that it’s as one sided as suggested in this article. My alternative source of information on the negotiations was had from interviews of a couple of lead negotiators on Fox Business news. Since China is about as big, economically, as the US, and the Chinese are no fools, I can’t believe they’d ever consider anything which would reduce them to that state that Russia was reduced to following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Trump is an intellectual lightweight , but the outlines of the policy prescriptions aren’t being formulated by him, but by his team. And – at least regarding the ones I heard interviewed – these are bright guys, and no fools, either.
China ‘will not retreat from its destiny’ – it cannot. This is not about ‘the Art of the Closing’ or ‘winning any deal’. It is about core interests clashing. And the result is always war. Conflict between the US and China, the two greatest global economies, will be a world war.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
Please be careful to stay on topic.
thank you!
The Saker
Well, this is amazing. A blog where you can have a discussion with Paul Craig Roberts, or where a commentator can publish an article, that’s pretty non-standard, isn’t it?
Thanks to the Saker for making those things possible, and many thanks to Larchmonter 445 to write an extensive and eye-opening article. It may have cost you the necessary time to build this but really man, it was damn worth it. Many thanks for that. I chewed it twice and I can really advise to read the speech of the Minister of National Defense of the PRC, General Wei Fenghe. That was quite a hammer. If I compare that to the hollow and slogan-yelling speeches of Pompeo, Bolton and a bunch of ilks in DC that I don’t even put the time in to mention them – then what would a sane person conclude?
I have a side thought that I want to share. There have been quite some discussions in this thread about the ‘culture’ in the USA (or the lack thereof). A main thing inherent of the USA actions is their ‘exceptionalism’ and their total incapability of a deal.
Is this some ‘zionist’ dilemma of the last decades? I doubt this.
Ask native Americans what a deal with Americans is worth. And that was quite some time ago.
Ask Germans, where over a million POW’s were deliberately starved to death between 1945 and 1947, when the war was wide over.
Ask North Koreans, when nothing was left to bomb in the Korean war, the USA bombed water dams to starve everybody.
Well, did it help? And was this ‘war’ or an attemption to ‘genocide’? You decide.
Could it be, that they learned this from the British?
The ‘culture’ or the everyday way of life of Americans has -I think- not that much to do with the actions of the US government. Especially not when the infrastructure is rotting away, and the real unemployment is somewhere between 30 and 40%. And the stock market is completely disintegrated from the real economy.
I think the Empire is mainly controlled by a small cabal of tribal families, obsessed with ‘domination’, ‘servitude’, and ‘destruction’. You guess what their brain-hardwired background is. You can find them in Tel Aviv, the USA or the City of London. And many places more. They have been thrown out of quite some countries.
Hey, when you have been bounced of many bars in your town, could it be, that the problem might be…, uhm, *you*?
Ok, let me add some comment on two commentators in this thread, in one post, I’ll try not to get it too much offtopic. ok?
@Auslander
I followed your wise advise concerning this article. I wish you a long life and a flourishing health, and I think the possibility is quite real that you’ll live to experience it. You know why. The collapse of the USSR did also happen quite suddenly, remember?
@Mulga Mumblebrain
As usual, your comments have put a smile on my face. Really.
Considering your thoughts on an ecological holocaust, and that we’ll perish in a few decades, I have a few other thoughts if you allow me.
In general I’m avoiding discussions on this, while I get more and more the idea that this has mainly the character of a religion in stead of a sane discussion.
At least you come up with arguments, and I appreciate that you care about the condition of our precious planet. So let’s go ;-)
Just consider this. Even the salafist IPCC admits that man-made CO2 emission have negleable effect on global warming. Please see this: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/07/SR15_SPM_version_stand_alone_LR.pdf
Read point A2 and further, page 7.
When even they say this, what am I supposed to think? I’m just a bloody engineer, not a climate scientist (well ok, I’ve read some things in my life).
The Green party in my country tends to think, that when taxes are raised enough, they have means to reach the thermostate of Mother Nature, turn it in our adventage, and we’ll all be saved. Oh, sigh. Do you believe this crap?
Add to that this. NASA scientists are convinced that we may be entering a period of global cooling, due to an expected decades-during period of Chinese food (aka ‘dim sun’): https://moneymaven.io/mishtalk/economics/amidst-global-warming-hysteria-nasa-expects-global-cooling-SJDpCv3V4EqKSOY11A378Q/ (more embedded links in this article).
Does this make things more comfortable? Hell no, imho. Cooling means shorter agricultural growing seasons, and food shortages. How basic does this score in the pyramid of Maslow?
You know, I’m not growing comfortable with his. Quite the reverse, actually. Add to that the underestimated real man-made actions, I’m not getting at rest with a Chernobyl still radiating, and a Fukushima still leaking radioactive Cesium into the Pacific (I couldn’t find the link anymore, but some two years ago biologists found many disfunctional and misformed fish around the Californian coast, some heard of ‘currents’ and connecting the dots?)
Add to that the thrashing deforestation on this planet, for 2-3%/year, yeah, reforestation is the answer, but why don’t we do that then in the same pace? And the killing plastic waste into our oceans. mainly coming coming from W-Africa and SO-Asia, you don’t solve that with abolishing straws in the West. That’s window-dressing for the fools.
So Mulga, I don’t want to critisize you within the boundaries of this blog. I may be on the same road as you considering the main paths that we are coming from. Ok. Germany and Australia are quite a while travelling, but we share both planet earth.
We may have some more time than a few decades to survive, don’t we? It may be just a wild guess. Considering Al Gore (who went filthy rich with his ‘certicates’) the artic ice wouldn’t exist anymore by 2013. Last time I checked it was still there.
I could be sarcastical with saying that actually it is water, but nowadays ‘identifying’ as ice, but hey, let’s get real. Extrapolating statistical data is a real bitch. Ever studied the (exponential) changes in inaccuracy at the ends of a statistical correlation?
I’ll just hope that not some nasty things throw this up. The Yellowstone volcano erupting, a meteor hitting our planet, the Tribe hitting about any country that they don’t like (that’s about anybody) with their nukes that officially this pearl of democracy doesn’t have.
We have serious problems to cover. Moreover, my guess is that you are way smarter than AOC (who may be moved by her sugar daddies from the Agenda-21 cult, who knows).
Okay, okay, I have hesitated about this a bit, but why not. Mulga, as a reader and just for readability, please consider this: use less commas, more points, and more spaces.
I guess it’s just your natural style, but imho it will enhance the impact of your appreciated posts. It’s definitely not criticism, I just want to give you this reflection as a reader.
Ok, just a final word.
I really liked this article (again, many thanks Larchmonter 445), and I liked the really intelligent posts of the commentators here. That’s the reason why I come here.
I wish you all the best, and may the Lord wake over you.
Cheers, Rob
Well, Rob, I’m afraid I’m rather taken with the Arctic ‘albedo flip’ path to disaster myself. There are numerous other routes, most slower but ineluctable, but the northern catastrophe has me convinced that the hour is very late.
The Arctic summer sea ice melts, and the albedo flips from white, heat reflecting ice to dark, heat absorbing sea. Higher temperature increases at high latitudes were predicted by Arrhenius in the 1890s, and the albedo flip leads to further ‘amplification’ of northern temperatures. That leads to permafrost melting, already seen, and the thawing of organic matter that, when consumed by aerobes releases CO2, and by anaerobes, methane. A nassty positive feedback.
Moreover, when the Sun’s rays reach the bottom of the shallow East Siberian Seas, they hit a good deal of frozen methane clathrates, and when (it’s not really a matter of ‘if’) they melt, another nassty positive feedback kicks in.
Furthermore, a recent study published in Nature showed, through the study of ice-cores, that in the past when the Arctic sea ice melted, the Greenland icecap lost a sort of ‘insulation’, and temperatures in Greenland rose by up to 16 degrees Celsius, in about one decade. Needless to say, we’d better pray that that does not happen.
And you have the now well-established derangement of the jet-streams caused by the disruption of the old temperature gradient between high latitudes and the tropics, and a lot more besides. I don’t think that a solar minimum will disrupt the process much, but it might delay it a little, as Pinatubo did after 1991 and as ‘global dimming’ from particulate smogs in East and South Asia does. It is complicated, but it all looks pretty grim to me. Thanks for your good wishes.
Larchmonter 445, this a superb report, but as an American, I am saddened that America is engaging in hybrid war against Russia and China: There is nothing to be gained and everything to lose.
I look forward to your future contributions.