Biden and Bloc-ing

Except for adding the cultivation of allies against China which will however end up creating blocs in the world and create more rifts between nations while breaking down international institutions, it's not likely Biden will de-trump his approach to China.

He has the personal challenge of winning the midterm election in November 2022 in order to finish his term so that trying to reverse now the bipartisan stand that is anti-China will earn him rebukes and lose him votes.

Until then, the US treatment of China may be expected to be more of the same.

Yet bloc-ing can end in boxing. Other nations would rather both resolve their differences and restore rapproachment; they fear being trampled by two elephants in the valley inasmuch two tigers on the hill. 

Moreover, an aerial or naval brush in East Asia can blow up into a fullscale conflict there if not the Balkans and Middle East.

Technology Decoupling

Likewise, balkanizing the world into trade and technology blocs will destroy value in existing supply chain installations all over the world, diminish the progress of multinationals and their attending financial supports, increase mistrust and acrimony, nosedive productivities, waste resources, decrease outputs, and worsen climate control when industries scramble to reduce their energy costs by increasing more fossil fuel usage since their markets will be reduced which will make clean energy investments unaffordable.

Yet, a world trying to recover from the pandemic which may resurge with new and more spiky variants will face the possibility of endless lockdowns, which in turn will increase the value of tech onlines to salvage unhinged economies.

This means that technology decoupling to buckle the trend of the critical importance of technology as economic integrator is the most counterproductive and stupidest thing to do at the worst possible time in world history because today, as it has been for decades, technology advancement is a cooperative global enterprise to solve all problems by achieving the lowest cost output through massive enhancement of individual comparative advantage of production so as to make a commercial success in sales in order to recover investments for future R&D.

After all, technology's basic imperative is always to innovate and never stand still, and it can only do that if there are new motivations and funds from more markets for future progress;

Just as US tertiary institutions have now successfully appealed to Biden to allow back China students, the biggest group in their midsts with three times payable tuition fees of locals, US technology multinationals are also facing the dilemma of trying to ramp up chip production for all industries including US auto makers in China, a problem which can be instantly solved by lifting chip and tech embargo against China. Unfortunately, Blinken is still blinking before Biden standing in Trump's shadow.

Furthermore, trying to establish different technical standards prompted only by ideological grounds is also counterproductive; doing so will split an increasingly digitized world into two first, then more after - like blocs.

After all, different technical standards are a bane on the very technical integration that creates scale to communicate and deliver project success. If west and east, north and south, adopt different technical standards for all manners of devices, how are the four hemispheres to talk and interact with one another into the future with view to increasing market size? What if there's an alien invasion, how can Nokia link to Huawei to call for help or Apple calls on Android but Xiaomi answers on HarmonyOS?

The UK is now finding that Brexit means it has to make to EC standards in addition to making to US standards if it wants export markets in both. Its production lines will become non-viable just as an airline cannot afford to have engine makes from different engine makers because parts inventories and maintenance costs will be too much to bear. Technicals aside, its exporters are already enmeshed in margins-shaving bureaucratic tape due to different standards requirements just to move their goods.

What was making for the world as one market, technology decoupling will end up making for the world as many different markets locked out into blocs. Business enterprises will decline. Unicorns will reverse their autonomous vehicles back into their suburban garages. Even Amazon will have to reverse the direction of its logo arrow. Entire markets and thus global industrial progress will be forfeited so that quality and value will not be sustainable. Meanwhile virus 617 has morphed into 666.

In Defense Of Proletariats

Since today is Labor's Day, this should be apt.

The US Congress whether Republican or Democrat majority must be utterly clear in their jaundiced minds on a couple of things:

One, they must ask Robert Kaplan and his wife whether all along the US intent on China is to convert her to their version of some Judeo-Christian framework in order to whitewash the inevitable excesses consequent from their own western imperialist capitalism.

Two, they must ask themselves whether all along the US with regards China has been itself suffering from the GFM syndrome.  Greed, when they admitted her to a WTO of their creation with view to tapping her workers for more profit. Fear when she succeeded in adding value to the joint-enterprises leading to more exports on her own steam. Mistrust when she rises to reclaim her past by beefing her defenses to protect her second emergence in her history after taking a leaf of her experiences at the hands of foreigners in the past, experiences which had seen her entire treasury purloined, her lands carved, her laws abolished, her society maligned and opioided, her peoples brutalized and killed until entire generations disappeared in blow after blow.

Three, they must also ask themselves whether their presumption of superiority stands up to facts, failing which their presumption of denial by way of sanctions and entity lists supports that presumed superiority. The present US narrative is about the superiority of its version of democracy over its branding of autocracy. It tries to support its narrative by impossibly trying to be subtle about one message: "do as i say, not as i do".

At the end of each of his 100-days, maybe Biden had chortled to himself as he looked into the fire in his fireplace in the White House and whispered to himself, "how the hell have we managed to get to go so far with our allies on this narrative...time for a catnap!"

US democracy is tainted. Because it breeds only megaphone morons, it is inefficient and ineffective for its 325 million proletariats. There is a colossal gap between its rich lobby-engorged elites and the rest of its economic pyramid which no amount of money printing and helicoptering can bridge.

But that is not to say the US will decline without picking itself up. However when it does so, will it be less martial towards others, less superiorist and condescending in nature (take that, Blinken), more sincere than a Sullivan who no one thinks is any more than another Pottinger, more respectful of the sovereign rights of other nations on the rise? Or will it still be trying to mouth the platitudes of its version of human rights and universal values after delaying the supply of life-saving medical supplies to a beleaguered subcontinent whose government had until now only looked up to it as big brother of common vintage?

Four, let it be abundantly clear to the world that the development of US-China relations has devolved because the US peremptorily overturned its treatment of China without so much as a gesture of finding common solutions based on more candid appreciation of differing geoeconomic assumptions totem-poled around different foci of historical experiences.

After all, in the four decades of mutual progress it had never raised anything up the difference in governmental ideologies. Were that not so, the bilateral relations would have died stymied from the very start.

Five, that out of the way, the US is now trying to con the world bigtime. It creates mischief, China responds as naturally any sovereign state would have to, and then it says there you go, see how right we are about her. The victimizer victimizes the victim - twice.

Yet while all this is happening, the peoples and industrialists of both sides continue to work with each other because they have to make a living, improve their lives, save and invest for the future, meet demand with supply.

Six, undoubtedly some from the US camp will say the US is merely defending the international rules-based order. But never in the entire history of that order was anyone allowed to express any concern about how sleighted that order can be towards everyone except its designer who lately has also been breaching its own rules while conveniently lambasting others for doing so without appreciating emerging nations need time to reform phasally - as it itself had done emerging from the shadows of its own brethren colonizer, England. Talk about the hypocrisy of double-standardized hegemons.

Which is also why the US still cannot accept the WHO conclusions on Wuhan while denying the institution's access to the US Fort Detrick biowarfare complex from which had leaked viruses years before 2019.  Which is also why the US Congress won't accept China's invitation for them even after Muslim nations have done so without fanfare or concern to visit Xinjiang and see for themselves that the US lie can't stand for long because the US will be having to eat it soon enough.  Which is also why the US continues to smear China over her HongKong despite evidence of the US' CIA having been the cause of its incitement there and in Xinjiang and in Tibet and in the foreign policy hallways of New Delhi, and with Thaad in South Korea, and with Taipei over the Straits, and with Japan on Diaoyu. The only thing missing in the entire charade is that the other Powell didn't bring out his baking powder to say to the United Nations it is another WMD. Maybe it's still in some locker in Canberra.

.......

SO, exactly what has China done to the United States of America to deserve such magnificent treatment, a question last asked to Japan?

Would it help if the CPC change its name to Government of China since that's the only government China's 1.4 Billion citizens know?

And if USA-type democracy is introduced into the country, who would be the optimal candidates to stand for election if not the same members of the CPC having proven themselves as able management of a complex and superhuge nation which has risen in just one generation from zero to hero of the proletariats of the world?

Is seeing China as an existential and consequential threat because of GFM, greed to maintain all wins for itself into the future when China is still consistently working for win-win for both, fear of being displaced when no such aspiration has ever been expressed by word or deed, and mistrust as just the instrument to weaponize hegemony by rallying men against men, policymakers against policymakers so as to protect a way of life already diminished by its own superficial and transient success, furthermore paid for by the trading economies of other nations beholden to the US financial system?

Even a Trump has seen it clearly although his attention span had veered somewhat downwards his torso before he fully understood the full import of the deleterious effects of his executive orders on tariffs and sanctions against China.

He said, "it's f'king crazy to take on China. They are 8,000 kilometers away."

The US is fast running out of ammo to shoot China.  If it has any real conscience as a supposedly responsible country, just stop the belligerent nonsense of making itinerant scapegoating. After all, such actions tend to boomerang.

ren/

Talk is Cheap

In his address to the Great Satan goons & thugs, war criminal, Biden, has claimed they're not looking for conflict with China. This is a  lie.

The Great Satan has been at war for all but 40 years since fighting the war of independence against the poodle empire of plundering. War criminal, Biden, has already presided over so-called FONOPs in the South China Sea. Of course, it's China which wants free passage for trade, so this is nothing more than a threat that they will impose an embargo. That's why China and Russia have neutralised the threat with the Belt & Road Initiative and the Northern Passage.

Western propaganda rags are hyping an invasion of Taiwan by the mainland in order to create discord across the Taiwan strait.

The Great Satan imposed the Chinese Exclusion Act. The Great Satan vowed to and then DID sabotage the joint sino-european sat-nav project. Under war criminal, Obama, they blocked ethnic Chinese from interacting with NASA and they've blocked China from participating in the so-called International Space Station, whilst allowing Russia to participate in the G7, probably as an attempt to divide Russia and China. As usual, they stabbed Russia in the back.

The Great Satan has also violated Huawei and ZTE's trading rights and attacked China with an illegal tariff war, whilst blocking the appointment of judges at the WTO so that their appeal against the WTO ruling that the illegal tariff war was illegal is held in limbo. War criminal, The Donald, even protested China's Made in China 2025 plan, which is none of his business.

Neither can the Great Satan's words ever be trusted. They continue to violate written land-treaties with the rightful owners of America. They promised freed african slave 40 acres of native American land and a mule but centuries later still haven't paid. They promised both Iran and Free Korea a nukilar reactor and reneged both times. The Great Satan (and poodle) reneged on the promise to Russia that NATO would not be extended "one inch" towards Russia's borders, but that was YET AGAIN a lie. They reneged on the JCPOA with Iran.

The likes of draft-dodging, war-mongering war criminal, John Bolton, have as much as stated that the World is not big enough for Russia, China and the Great Satan. They have no intention of ever allowing peace because that would be a meritocracy where they are the shoe-shine boys. Neither should Russia or China want to trade with a parasite that started both World Wars to impose jew-confetti on the planet before defaulting on gold outright in 1971 and they haven't had a trade surplus since 1975.

Or as they say in Poodleville, "Whoever you vote for, the government always gets in."

War criminal, Biden, like war criminal, The Donald, was chosen by the Electoral College, which is just the goons & thugs. The sheeple are brain-washed to vote for their front-man of choice. But the same gangsters are always in charge.

How else would you explain a "democracy" where the sheeple have voted for a high rate of poverty for themselves, where they have no job security and just getting ill means they can become destitute. That includes the likes of punk-rock stars, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein struggling to afford Stein's medical bills!!! How oppressive is that!?! Even worse is the sheeple supposedly voting for a goon-squad that kills blacks with impunity and whites at Waco in Texas as well as Ruby Ridge.

The Great Satan is clearly a malignant evil.

It's funny that you mention wind turbines because I was looking into the work of a Scottish lawyer based in Edinburgh, who is onto something big in the UK energy sector using DJI drones for the inspection of wind turbines (imagine the downtime saved from using drones for inspecting the blades). 

There is going to be stiff competition for years to come in this area.  China has 1,200 companies in 2017 (the latest information available) that were engaged in both hardware and software research in this field.  DJI had 70% of the market share at that time, and probably much more now that the competition is nowhere to be seen.

Whilst Trump had used a blunderbuss on China, Biden has upgraded to a Barrett M95 long-range sniper rifle.

The intention, however, remains the same.  World domination failing which destabilization and overthrow of the governments of nations which only want to actualize self-reliance while consistently admitting global comparative advantage.

In Biden's case, he is smearing China so that he can re-unite the bipartisan politics of his country against a mythicized 'enemy' in order to win congressional majority support in next year's mid-term election to be able to continue his term.

He thinks he needs to create a national 'enemy' in order to create a sputnik moment to rally Americans behind him so as to gain traction for his USD6 Trillion plans (rescue 1.9, jobs 2.3 and families 1.8) to be paid by printing more money and taxing the rich even if that will mean inflation followed by stagflation landing on a consumerist and entitlist society with a white supremacist vein that lords over other nations paying for US excesses using its currency evaporating in value day by day.

His foreign policy on China has expanded from Trump's labelling of her as an 'existential threat' to his labelling of her as ' the most consequential nation' to be contained by the salami tactic of trying to confuse her with competition juxtaposed with collaboration but actually containment since his US is still targeting win-lose over a China which has only been saying 'differences are acknowledged but mutual respect remains the only foundation to overcoming them'.

Whether republican or democrat, the US is still playing its zero-sum game of "i only can win provided you must lose". And that is why it keeps on slamming its crock of lies and half-baked speculation about Xinjiang after failing to mount even one slam-dunk case against Meng, Huawei, Wuhan and HongKong so that it can create a corrosive agitprop narrative resonating in some echo chamber to pull in its partners to widen the net around China, the same partners which had cut her flesh to the bone in the past. 

Are they so juvenile they can't see they are being forced to be hypocrites by talking about human rights while repeating the hegemony of their forefathers against the very notion of sovereignty that had succored their own civilisation through silver and silk and tea and the yellow 'peril' labor sacrificed in the trenches of Europe and the railroads of California?

Surely, the Europeans and others must know if the US is bristling to reinstate its own glory, it will be at their expense. If the US wants to deglobalize itself, will it anytime be buying more from a Europe in industrial tatters from the pandemic?

As a minute example, take Biden's mention of wind turbines to be made solely in his US.

The critical question about climate change is no longer about who makes what but time remaining before inflection point when it will be too late.

This time to make and market is itself dependent on business viability, ergo funds available to make and to buy, neither of which any US enterprise can afford to ramp up scale quickly when on the other side of the Atlantic ocean already stands China the world leader in solar panels and wind turbines - at lower costs and higher scale.  Yet the entire US Congress applauded when Biden suggested it. They clean well forgot about the imperative of time. The only race in the world must be the race to reach a global solution for the planet-wild problem of climate change. Because the problem is in the same sky above all.

Therefore, for want of the horseshoe of clearer thinking and wisdom about oneself perhaps through too much consumption of sirloin and cheeseburgers, the global battle against climate change is already going to be lost. Where again did Biden and his cohorts say they had their education?

What for wind turbines and solar panels, the same too for steel and aluminium, semiconductors, telecommunications, autos, chemicals, vaccines and ventilators, even transborder services. The US by weaponizing technology decoupling is going to hurt the world's supply chains at exactly the worst time before pandemic recovery.

In that perspective, have Europe, Japan and South Korea therefore even thought what will happen if the US draws by its centripetal force their talents away who are today all the more needed to recover their own economies and rebuild their societies?

This has already happened to the UK which through Brexit has diminished its financial hub status to Europe and its tech entrepreneurs to the US' silicon valley, which both it is nattily trying to deflect attention by a laughable show of some past glory flying its flag on its new aircraft carrier in Asia. To what end except burn fuel draw guffaws risk conflict?

One must therefore see everything in precise perspective. One, the US is a hegemon and brooks no alternatives. Two, it lies to build its case. Three, it is martial at cost of other lives. Four, it eats everyone else's lunch through the exorbitant privilege of its dollar currency. Five, it spews thugspeak and acts like one. Six, it has no long-range vision of humanity, only long-range sniping weapons of mass destruction to protect short-range tactical sole wins.

And most importantly, all these are coming out in a relentless torrent of hypocritical, double-standard, doublespeak of a group of elitist power-mongers in the halls of Washington DC, the same halls which were recently assailed by its own voters. Does one still have to name those names. The list amounts to no more than fifty trying to sucker the world while producing mayhem towards the brink of open conflict.

Meanwhile the rest of its 300+ population are decent people however open to persuasion by megaphone leaders of opportunistic but dubious character who exude the halo of the concerned in front but overlooks the damage done to others by their policies well-meant however only to themselves.

Thus remains to be said - the US funding Biden's US-inwards stimulus plans are going to lock out other nations from its market, decouple talent from supply chains across the globe, and weaken the dollar which too many are holding thinking it's safe with Powell trying not to look too sheepish about interest rates in order not to jar the US stock markets so important to create 'that feeling that good times are back' but before the next bubble bursts.

Meanwhile, how can those parliamentarians who paraded their european character still be saying "we can sanction you over a lie but you cannot sanction us back over a truth" - unless they had been baked and bred in the same US world of double-standards?

It's all an identifiable group of power-mongers, mercantilist lobbyists and brokers, imperialists and racists. Even the lowiest fish-monger has better morals and ethics.

US and East Asian multinationals must continue to believe in the sanity of rational wide-angle pragmatism, win-win joint-venture cooperation and tax rationalization, and not the mass-herd corralling by some pinstriped leaders in their charge of their obsolescent light brigades of this century. After all, the salt of the earth are going to be only ones making it work again, lifting standards, adding value, saving lives.

The Indians who have died for want of vaccine raw materials when India was the biggest vaccine maker in the world are no longer around to echo the above just because some government it had looked up to dithered whether to send over material it knew it had an excess of  - just because it wanted to look good to its own people since it thought other human beings aren't.

One may not be very bright but surely US policymakers can't be that stupid.

ren/

Development is a keyword but not the only one.

That's because a nation's development is hinged on many factors and you cannot simply draw an upward-trending straight line and call that the sure outcome at the end of its projected trajectory.

That means we should never expect the road ahead to be smooth-sailing. Keeping constant vigilance will ensure that we have a better chance of achieving our goals.

Neither nations nor civilizations make progress continuously from beginning to end.  For instance, Chinese civilization had already been resplendent for several millennia before Europeans came out of their Dark Ages, and yet in the hundred years after the 1839-42 Opium War, China sank into abysmal darkness and became one of the least-developed nations of the world.  

Now that it has managed to re-establish itself as a sure-footed nation, the most important lesson it should have learned is that it should never let its guard down again and should always be watching out for the dangers lurking around the corner.

When time allows I will write further on this topic now that I have given Biden enough time -- 100 days -- to reveal his true face.