CHINAwatch

President Xi's visit to India following Pakistan PM's visit to Beijing

Live TV interview of 8 October, 2019 on IndusNews

Cross Talk: Communist China at 70

Cross Talk debate on RT released on 2 October, 2019. (Broadcasting from Moscow and Washington D.C. channels, RT was the first news channel to break one billion YouTube viewers benchmark. It is now the No.1 TV news network on YouTube with more than nine billion views across its channels and over 14 million subscribers.)

China at 70 has much to celebrate, but its biggest challenges lie ahead

Cary Huang's column of 29 September in the South China Morning Post gives an up-to-date catalogue of China's impressive achievements under the Communist Party of China. In just seven decades, what would have taken the West centuries, a poverty-stricken, internationally weak, and backward Chinese nation has been turned into an economic and geopolitical powerhouse, a leading engine of global growth projecting influence across continents and oceans. A video clip From Ashes to Prosperity shows what breathtaking transformation the nation has undergone since the ravages wrought by the Japanese invasion. 

Huang mentions that "per capita GDP rose from just US$200 in 1979 – when 80 per cent of Chinese lived in absolute poverty in rural areas – to around US$10,000 last year, firmly in middle-income territory." This is singularly instructive, as China seems to have successfully escaped the much-hyped "middle-income trap". 

At his latest address at the United Nations, President Trump suggested that as the world's second largest economy, China is already an advanced country. It cannot pretend to remain a developing nation, thereby gaming the international trading system. Huang's observation is timely that "China is still neither an advanced nor a developed country. Nor can it properly be described as a rich nation. It is a developing giant on the world stage." His assertion is supported by China's GDP per capita below the worldwide average of US$11,570, not to mention backwardness in many other metrics, including the environment and institutions. 

This helps to debunk popular Sinophobia that China is a global superpower threatening to impose an authoritarian model on the rest of the world. "To be a true superpower, a country must wield global influence in many, varied spheres: in economics, in science and technology, in military matters and in soft power." In economics, China perhaps scores an A. But the country still lags far behind the United States in global military capabilities and behind many Western advanced countries, big and small, in scientific breakthroughs. "China has just three Nobel Prizes; one for science, one for literature and one for peace (the last of which was awarded against Beijing’s will)," Huang observes. 

Above all, "Today, every single nation to have joined the 36-member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has been not only a market economy, but also a free democracy." Despite its dramatic ascendancy, China's massive deficit of soft power stands in the way of its achievement of great power status. No matter how well China may excel in other fields, and how more influential China becomes globally, this deficit in soft power of universal appeal is likely to remain a stumbling block along the nation's ambitious trajectory. 

The concentration of power under President Xi may be necessary to combat corrupt interests and political detractors in order to steer the nation on course to realize the China Dream of becoming a fully developed nation by 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the Communist Party of China. However, with the rapid rise of a university-educated middle class, the goal's realization is likely to depend on a willingness to embrace modernity in governance – democracy, freedom and the rule of law.  

Why China says "No" to US arms control idea after US-Russian row over Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty

Live TV panel discussion on PressTV on  23 August 2019

Why US steps up weapon sales to Taiwan?

Live interview with PressTV on 17 August, 2019

US massive arms sale to Taiwan squares with One-China policy?

Live interview with RT on 9 July, 2019 

Live interview with PressTV the same day.

Europe continues to welcome Chinese investment in its ports, despite US concerns

With a more nuanced response to China's global connectivity (slide no. 66-69), Europe seems doubling down on its Belt and Road Initiative, according to independent journalist Emanuele Scimia in the South China Morning Post of 20 June, 2019.

Much-needed infrastructural investments including ports and other logistics linking to the world's largest trading nation are seen by smaller and larger European countries alike as hugely beneficial. While many of America's concerns are shared, such as lack of corporate governance, debt burden and impact on the environment, the rhetoric about a geopolitical plot behind the Initiative is generally regarded as overblown.

China's various state-owned entities have taken substantial equity stakes in some European ports e.g. 51% in Port Piraeus, 49.9% in two terminals in Genoa and 35% in Rotterdam. According to the article, new cooperation agreements or letters of intent are now being signed with a string of European countries including Italy (Trieste), Netherlands (Rotterdam), Belgium, Spain, France, and Malta. Even Norway's Arctic city of Kirkenes is building a new sea port to connect to China's "Polar Silk Road". 

America Must Prepare for the Coming Chinese Empire

Writing for The National Interest on 17 June, 2019, Robert Kaplan, managing director for global macro at Eurasia Group, warns of "the coming Chinese Empire".

A different class of America competitor multiple degrees more formidable than the former Soviet Union, China's ascendancy is driven by efficient state capitalism supported by robust civilizational culture and its Belt and Road Initiative of global ambitions.

Kaplan proposes that the United States should avoid getting entangled in the Middle East and should focus instead on the Indo-Pacific. While unlikely to become a firm US ally, India's capabilities should be strengthened together with boosting Taiwan's defences, both as counterweight against the spread of China's growing influence in the region.

He concludes by saying that "the last thing American policymakers or strategists should assume is that somehow we are superior to the Chinese, or worse: that somehow we have a destiny that they do not."

Does Trump hold all the cards against China?

While China is brazing itself to withstand Trumpian bullying on all fronts, the narrative that the United States holds all the cards against China deserves a little perspective. China has powerful cards up its sleeve.

First, according to a report in Foreign Policy, China could shut down America's defenses by denying access to China's monopoly of high-end processed rare earths. Second, as anti-China tariffs widen to catch more and more consumer products, according to the IMF, the U.S. is paying China's tariff costs .Third, China is weaponizing its position as the world's second largest economy by drawing up a retaliatory "Unreliable Entities" blacklist. 

These three alone should give pause to America First sky-is-the-limit bullying of China, not to mention an arsenal of other non-tariff measures calculated to inflict serious harm to many American businesses exposed to the China market as well as other manoeuvres designed to complicate America's diplomatic and geopolitical interests including North Korea. 

Why does the US attack Huawei on all fronts?

News brief on PressTV of 12 June, 2019, quoting my live TV interview clips.