Jan 21, 2021, 13:38
It's Wednesday, the sun is shining, Washington has been locked down and the troops have been vetted by the CIA for any pro-Donald Trump sympathizers. Joe Biden's inauguration is now protected against recriminations by some of the US electorate who believe Biden is not the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election.
While voices in the US constantly label China as a threat, clearly the greater threat to the US comes from within. Furthermore, it is plain that the US, with its constant hysterical denunciations of China, actually poses a threat to China's system. With this internal and international contradiction in mind, is it possible that Biden's presidency will lead to an improvement in Sino-US relations?
On a micro level, much has been made of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son's business dealings in China. This has been portrayed as compromising Joe Biden who will be more pro-China. However, the obvious fact is that just about all in the US capital has dealings and investments in China. With US democracy being so heavily co-opted by the lobbying power of US transnational capital, which funds both parties, there will always be knotty relations and apparent conflict of interests within the US' governing elite.
However, let's not assume that just because transnational capital does business in China means it will be more friendly to Beijing. Clearly, the US neoliberal mass media takes a solid anti-China line. As such, the position of the US elites is that they are happy to trade and profit from China while they simultaneously would like to take provocative actions against it for their own gains.
Biden, unlike Trump who predominantly stood for national capital, represents US neoliberal transnational capital. As such, with his transnational outlook, he will deal with China in a more calm and diplomatic manner. But this calmness comes down to the pragmatism of representing his class interests rather than anything else.
Let us not forget Obama, who Biden served under as vice president, was also a mouthpiece for neoliberal capital. This was demonstrated by his bailout of private banks and the fact that his cabinet was chosen by Citibank. Obama, who initiated the pivot to Asia, which fuels defense spending, demonstrates that Obama was hardly China's ally and neither will Biden be.
The tragedy of US democracy is that the important long-term strategic decisions are simply not in the hands of elected leaders. Instead, the deep state, formed by neoliberal capital, controls the strategic levers of power. This was manifestly demonstrated by Trump's Twitter cancellation.
Trump despite his stubbornness was unable to counter this neoliberal power. Indeed, he was played well by them. Thus, Biden who is supportive of neoliberal capital will tend to swim with the current of the deep state and not against it. As such, Biden's inauguration will make little difference to the decisions coordinated behind the scenes amongst a neoliberal military-industrial-complex alliance that pulls in think-tanks, the mass-media, capital, NGO's and universities.
The think tanks funded by Washington and the military-industrial complex will no doubt continue to misrepresent the situation in Xinjiang. Indeed, according to Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, the former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, the reason the US is in Afghanistan is to disrupt China's Belt and Road Initiative with hard power and use the Uygurs to destabilize China's rise.
Going back from a macro outlook back to a micro outlook, it is said that Biden has a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Biden claims to have spent more time with Xi than any world leader. When Biden toured China, in August 2011, he was accompanied to Beijing and Chengdu by Xi.
On that visit, Biden bought his granddaughter Naomi Biden who speaks Chinese. Furthermore, when Xi went to the US in February 2012 he was accompanied by Biden to Los Angeles. There they jointly announced a deal to show more Hollywood movies in China every year.
Consequently, with the progress, both men have made together, China will no doubt feel that a presidency under Biden could be more business-like and less precarious than a Trump presidency. However, sometimes too much can be made of statements of personal friendship. Trump, after all, said he got on well with Xi and Trump's grand-children, who are learning Mandarin, sang Mo Li Hua (jasmine flower) when Xi met with Trump. Nevertheless, on the geopolitical level, Sino-US relations hardly thrived.
This is because, lamentably, when it comes to US liberal democracy there is a small smorgasbord of rhetoric that creates the illusion of democracy.
However, deep state machinations always prevail and Biden, no matter how nice he is, won't be able to change this because power in the US doesn't lie in democratically elected officials.
The author Keith Lamb is a University of Oxford graduate with an MSC degree in Contemporary Chinese Studies. (CGTN)
RE: "After all, the days of denn heute da hört uns Amerikanen und morgen die ganze welt should be over."
they aint that wrong...
Here's one and the latest example.
The EU, is being manipulated to shut down the Russian pipeline for humatarian reasons. Free Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, jailed for good reasons. EU simply couldn't stop the pipeline for good, but thir leaders are very afraid from within oppositin at home...
Uncle Sam figures getting a new Russian leader as an american puppy will get them a step closer to the Middle Kingdom...
Without doubt, we do hove a smart uncle Sam is...
Make No Mistake with Biden!
It is US against China!
Not Biden against China!
New borns know that the landscape changed and will deteriorate further. US wants and must remain the only single superpower that is second to none. For that and to maintain it, destructive action to China is the only choice.
Please grow up!
Mark:
Splendid post.
I had been very busy lately so I didn't get to see your remarks here until now.
Yes, Trump has committed many unforgivable crimes. He will pay for those crimes like in the case of the attacks on the Iranian elites.
I am still of the opinion that Biden should be given time -- not too much, but enough for him to at least gather the crew that he would need for his long journey ahead.
Whoever is on his team does matter tremendously, and what they say during the congressional hearing should not be taken seriously because those statements served only one purpose -- to pass their employment examinations (and particularly the scrutiny of the Republicans).
I think a good sign is that Biden has stopped the oil pipeline to Canada from being built through the lands of the Native Americans due to environmental concerns.
The Canadians under Trudeau (the son is a political midget when compared to his dad) were holding Meng Wanzhou chiefly because they were afraid that Trump might whimsically disapprove of the multi-billion-dollar project.
Now the sticking point has been removed, I think Meng has a good chance of being released from custody.
But now is the time when her personal security should be of concern to Beijing.
Our side should make sure that when she is released she is in one piece and whisked under heavy security to the airport and return to China on a Chinese plane,
That is because the Trump gangsters might want to create a problem for Biden by harming Ms. Meng.
"Expect they will soon be busy weaponizing the European greens movement to use its EC parliamentarian members against China on the matter on human rights."
The man has just entered the White House; give him time to settle into his job, he can't be worse than Trump. Yes, human rights is bipartisan issue, but with trade, climate change, etc, Biden is likely to be more rational than Trump, which is already an improvement for China and the rest of the world. The alternative, if Trump had succeeded in stealing the election, would be four more years of chaos, lies, back-stabbing. Be thankful that Trump is gone, and Biden is at the helm; he may not please China in all matters, but surely better to deal with than Trump!
Surely can't be as bad as relations with Trump, who only made China the scapegoat for his domestic problems, to catch votes, but he still lost to Biden. And Trump lied so much, and flip flopped from day to day, how can China, or for that matter anyone else work with Trump! Must be glad Trump is gone for good!
It would be a greek tragedy to make the same mistake twice.
China had thought Trump would be different from Obama. Look what happened. Shake hands in front, stab knife in back.
Still want to give Biden the benefit of a doubt when, as protege of Obama, he has already arrayed a battalion of anti-China sinophobes still muttering the same laundry list of accusations against China before their US Congress credentializing committee?
Expect they will soon be busy weaponizing the European greens movement to use its EC parliamentarian members against China on the matter on human rights.
Before they hurl accusations at China again, just ask whoever opens his/her mouth how the East European meatpackers laboring under harsh conditions have been treated.
At the same time, ask how Trump's sanctions on China enterprises are still being maintained in the new US administration as the same leverage to crowbar US advantage over European enterprises trying to get into the China market.
The Europeans must be fully cognizant of one incontrovertible fact - the US has always been using its Atlantic alliance for its interest and benefit foremost. All that talk about shared values, democracy, freedom, western ideals, way of life, human rights even is just snakeoil condiment.
If those values and ideals are so great, how come the US is the only country which has bombed so many nations when they were down and trying to survive? Try this list - and the europeans should more candidly ask themselves why they have never once publicly confronted their Alliance cousin on it if they too subscribe to the same values and ideals:
Korea (1950-53; napalm)
Guatemala (1954)
Indonesia (1958)
Cuba (1959-1961)
Guatemala (again, 1960)
Congo (1964; hello Belgium)
Laos (1964-1973)
Vietnam (1961-1973)
Cambodia (1969-1970)
Guatemala (yet again, 1967-1969)
Grenada (1983)
Lebanon (1983, 1984)
Libya (1986)
El Salvador (1980s)
Nicaragua (1980s)
Iran (1987)
Panana (1989)
Iraq (1991)
Kuwait (1991)
Somalia (1993)
Bosnia (1994-1995)
Sudan (1998)
Afghanistan (1998)
Yugoslavia (1999)
Yemen (2002)
Iraq (again, 1991-2003)
Iraq (and again, 2003-2015)
Afghanistan (again, 2001-2015)
Pakistan (2007-2015)
Somalia (again and again 2007-2008, 2011)
Yemen (again, 2009, 2011)
Libya (2011, 2015)
Syria (2014-2015)
Easily 1 million Iraqi's were killed; 220,000 Afghans; 80,000 Pakistanis, the lists are as long as a stock exchange ticker tape on steroids. They died on their own lands at the hands of an aggressor separated from them by two oceans so how were they an enemy or threat to the aggressor? Should one have to ask the UK's Blair for an answer, since he has already confessed he knew the Iraqi WMD charge was an absolute lie faked by G W Bush and his US Defense department, furthermore articulated volubly by the US' Powell at the UN? If the US could scam the UN, the EC will be easier meat, wouldn't they?
Biden's Blinken would have noted that the same assinine Pompeo, easily the worst US Secretary of State in the same manner his boss was the worst US president, had bragged the US has killed Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Was that why he is now so concerned about the human rights of Muslims in Xinjiang? If killing is a common sin, in what way is his religion superior to Islam, he having received deaconic training and all? For a small man aspiring to the US 2024 presidency, he has no soul, only a glib and loose forked tongue straight out of a spineless body. Indeed, US hypocrisy at its most hilarious finest.
Biden's sinophobes and the EC should take note of all this. Since WWII, the US has been directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of 20-30 million peoples in the world. That's a number without having fought a world war, after the last two world wars of equivalent numbers of deaths.
Yet, it's actually easy to believe in the US again and its notion of human rights. But that would need a herculean and insuperable task in two regards:
First, ignore the fact that human rights must first mean economic and sovereign rights; after all, empty stomachs and hopeless futures don't make good citizens, regardless of any ideology or ideal - NOT;
Second. the bombings inflicted by the US military-industrial complex on so many innocents in the world as the above list amply testifies, must have been bombs filled only with pink-colored Muriate Of Potash fertilizer to help them grow their crops, not 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) to help them soak their own blood and skeletal ash in their own fields.
Now, why can't those idealistic and energetic youngsters out of the top schools in Europe who want to help others in the world who are less privileged see these points clearly enough to put a stop to their own western hypocrises?
Is it because they still cannot synchronize their need to atone for the past sins of Europe towards Asia and Africa with their need to wear a soporific comfort coat of some notion of western democracy that is however only a west-designed battering ram against the right of others not of their expectations to want to carve their own destinies free from such hypocrisies as generated by their belief in some clash between west and east?
Incidentally, is India still so besotted by the Anglo-Saxons that its administration can ignore how Victoria's England's East India Company had sucked the Indian treasury dry to the tune of billions in sterling equivalent just by a single legal condition (in english) imposed on Indian trade while under British occupation? That after India had also lost its soul growing British opium to force on China. India should not make the same mistake when Biden's Campbell or Japan's Suga comes a-calling on quad and what-not.
The above list of those countries bombed by the US has a common profile - poor and needy. So too the list of those countries supplied instead with much critically needed vaccines by China and Russia - Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Philippines, Indonesia and Hungary (Sinopharm and Sinovac), and Algeria, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Brazil (Sputnik V). See the difference? One kills, the other two save. There must be something about being 'authoritarian' which saves and being 'democratic' which destroys...
Right now, the only nuclear reactor of economic growth in a pandemic world is China. But she can no longer import without being welcomed to her exports. Because this time after Trump she should (must) be careful about the intents of others which only want her market but will mount hurdles to prevent her rise using their crafty leverages of factless accusations and willy-nilly sanctions even when they all have already long realized everyone will in his/her own good time subscribe to wandel durch handel.
China is big and old; the world should respect more her wisdom and give her more time. After all, they may themselves come round to agreeing she is more right for the whole world than them.
After all, the days of denn heute da hört uns Amerikanen und morgen die ganze welt should be over.
Yet, checking the calculations again, there's only a 0.5% chance the Biden administration will realize and accept this.
Does this comment satisfy any reader on this topic's question?
ren/
Biden has commenced his attack on China on Xinjiang, which is meddling with internal affairs of foreign country that is not within any aspect of US.
Like Trump, Biden will cast the net wider and sink its anchors deeper to trawl for more disturbance. He is another Trump just with another label!
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