CHINAwatch

China urges US to end its "hegemonic" view

Live interview on 26 March 2025 with NewX World, India's fastest-growing English-language global news channel claiming some 100 million viewers. (My segment starts from time counter 19:35)  

Paradigm Shifts Upending the World Order 2025

A PowerPoint presentation on 4 March 2025 to a business group meeting at HSBC HQ confernence room.
Download Paradigm Shifts Upending the World Order 2025 - EGN Group meeting 4 March 2025

 

President Xi's New Year Message on Taiwan's future

Live TV debate on NewsX, India's fastest-growing and award-winning English-language news channel with over 100 million viewers. (The Indian interlocutor misrepresented President Xi's remarks. "Our generation" doesn't mean Xi's personal lifetime, but the current generation of the Chinese people as a whole. Beijing's military drills are meant to deter separatist moves and to create a momentum towards  negotiations for peaceful unification.) 

香港一國兩制價值觀與1997年前比較

2024 年 12 月 9 日多伦多粤语 YouTube 频道在线采访 

What does the BRICS Summit hosted by Russia signify?

A pre-recorded newsclip taken at Pier No 10 on Hong Kong's harbour front on 25 October 2024 for Viory Video News Agency, a global video news outlet for Global South issues headquartered in Abu Dhabi.
Download Viory Video News Agency interview video clip

 

China-Africa Summit 2024 - What are the implications

Backchat  on RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong) on 6 September,  

Innovation in the Fast Lane: Discussing China’s Auto Industry - CSIS podcast

An insightful podcast dated 12 August 2024 interviewing Michael Laske, a sage American veteran auto industry consultant in China. The podcast is part of the China Field Notes series hosted by leading US China expert Scott Kennedy,  senior adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Washington D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Both experts have decades of leading hands-on field work inside China. Their balanced take throws light on how, with an all-society ecosystem of joint ventures, technological manpower, government direction, and mastery of full-spectrum supply and value chains including a digitally-connected economy,  China has emerged relatively rapidly from a student of internal-combustion-engine (ICE) cars to becoming the new Detroit for electric vehicles (EVs), automobiles of a hopefully-greener 21st century. 

 

U.S. and China: Edging Toward the Brink?

US and China: Edging towards the brink? - Under the auspices of Washington D.C. based Aspen Institute, Niall Ferguson, the celebrated historian who predicted Cold War II in 2018, assembled some of the sharpest minds from both sides for an in-depth debate (Aspen Ideas Festival) on the future of U.S.-China relations, featuring David Daokui Li, Andrew Erickso, Keyu Jin, and Matt Pottinger.

The debate is extremely useful as it sharpens the often-twisted popular rhetoric, focussing on how best to "read China" with more productive perspectives, including difference in national psyche, cultural DNAs, the Taiwan issue, China's new "Generation Z", China's pragmatic priorities in the coming decades, and the need for more people-to-people exchanges.  

How the US Keeps Fighting China, Knowing It Won’t Win?

The US has no Plan B, says Professor Radhika Desai, Director of the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, on the YouTube Thinkers Forum on 25 January 2024. She goes over paradigm shifts in 2023 on America's hegemony, including Ukraine and Gaza; the long-term impact on US's own economy; Russia's resilience against US-led pushback; questionable durability of the "casino-like" open-market dollar-system; the future of US-China relations; China's more restrained and globally-inclusive diplomatic stance; and the upcoming impactful elections in the United States and the United Kingdom. 

I should add that America's so-called Plan A against China has only four blunt coercive tools: (a) US military dominance, (b) US technological lead, (c) the weaponized dollar, and (d) America's so-called global alliance-network. These are proving less and less effective against China. 

As for (a), China has vastly expanded its military on all fronts. While unwilling and unable to match America's global military presence and supremacy, Chins is well capable of defending its core interests. This includes a mobile, hypersonic, nuclear-capable Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) System with multiple, separately-navigable warheads, a blue-water navy with more warships than the United States, state-of-the-art fifth-generation fighter planes and bombers, not to mention cyberwarfare and AI expertise. 

As for (b), nano-semiconductor-chips excepted for the time being, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has found that China is leading in 37 out of 44 21st-century cutting-edge technologies. Albeit excluded from the US-led International Space Station project from the very start, which is near the end of its useful life, China has succeed in building and operating its own Tiangong Space Station from scratch. It is the only country able to send a successful robotic probe to the far side of the moon. Its lunar program is picking up speed, partnering with other nations including some advanced countries. 

As for (c), indiscriminate long-arm dollar sanctions have pushed countries in the Global South to bypass the risks of exposure to a weaponized dollar. Some are beginning to transact bilateral trade with China using other currencies including the Renminbi. China's digital sovereign currency (e-CNY) is gaining traction internationally. After all, China is by far the world's largest trader and manufacturer. It remains the larger trading partner for 128 countries compared with America's 57. Seven of the world's top 11 container ports are in China, including Hong Kong. Even not "Made in China", China is embedded in myriad products across the globe, including materials. minerals, components and logistics, decoupling or de-risking regardless. 

As for (d), marginalized for decades under US hegemony, the Global South has become more able to defend their national sovereignty and strategic interests. Witness the massive Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) comprising ASEAN countries and their main trading partners. Absent the United States, this is the world's largest free trade bloc representing a third of global GDP and a third of world population, where China remains a central trading hub.  More developing countries have also chosen to join the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Group as well as the Eurasian Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) where China and Russia hold sway. Witness also the more independent tilt of the Middle East and even India. Fact is, most nations in the Global South don't want to be forced to choose between America and China, which remains a key source for economic development, including trade and infrastructure.

The fixation on coercion to serve American interests often ignores stark realities, includinjg Adam Smith's ''comparative advantage". China has been buying a lot of international passenger jets from Boeing and Airbus, as it has yet no comparable alternatives. However, as China is the world's largest manufacturer, the reverse is true for most of China's manufacturing ouput, including its fully-integrated shipbuilding production chains. According to a report of 19 April in Foreign Policy, Chinese businesses manufacture  96 percent of the world’s dry cargo shipping containers. A single Chinese firm, ZPMC, claims that it supplies  70 percent of the world’s cargo cranes. This compares to U.S.shipyards manufacturing fewer than 1 percent of the cargo vessels that ply the global seas. Using coercive sanctions to turn the table is fanciful. 

All in all, as pointed out by Professor Desai, the days of American hegemony are numbered. The sooner America's elites wake up from their pipe-dream of perpetuating American hegemony through brute coercion, the better would be the propsects for a more inclusive and peaceful world, where the United States can still play a crucial role.   

Majority in Southeast Asia would choose China over US, survey suggests

The Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute finds in its latest State of Southeast Asia 2024 survey that for the first time, 59.9 percent of respondents chose China over the United States as the most influential economic power in the region, compared with  38.9 percent of  such respondents the previous year. Click here

This change of perception may have been influenced by perceived American bias over the Israel-Hamas war, according to a South China Morning Post report.

It may also be due to the reality that China has become the predominant economic power for some SE Asian nations such as Malaysia and Indonesia. Nevertheless, certain SE nations like the Philippines, Vietnam and Singapore, to various degrees, continue to tilt towards thed United States. 

A chart taken from the survey illustrates this dichotomy. Download SE Asian nations - More positive views of China - Singapore Survey

In any event, the above doesn't alter the situation that SE Asian nations prefer a peaceful balance between the United States and China, rather than being forced to take sides, least of all in a military conflict.