Posted on 05/27/2020 3:59:22 AM PDT by Kaslin
Is the U.S. up for a second Cold War -- this time with China?
What makes the question newly relevant is that Xi Jinping's China suddenly appears eager for a showdown with the United States for long-term supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and the world.
With the U.S. consumed by the coronavirus pandemic that has killed 100,000 Americans and crashed our economy to depths not seen since the Great Depression, China's dictator seems to be making his move.
At the Communist Party conclave this May, China announced that it was seizing control of Hong Kong's security. From now on, subversion, sedition, secession and foreign meddling within the city will be crushed.
Whatever sanctions the U.S. and its allies impose, there will be no free and independent Hong Kong.
"For an Ascendant China, Reining in Hong Kong Is Just the Start," is the headline over The New York Times story on China's new assertiveness.
"China's move to strip away another layer of Hong Kong's autonomy was not a rash impulse. It was a deliberate act, months in the making," writes reporter Steven Lee Myers. "It took into account the risks of international umbrage and reached the reasonable assumption that there would not be a significant geopolitical price to pay. ...
"With the world distracted by the pandemic's devastating toll, China has taken a series of aggressive steps in recent weeks to flex its economic, diplomatic and military muscle across the region.
"China's Coast Guard rammed and sank a fishing boat in disputed waters off Vietnam, and its ships swarmed an offshore oil rig operated by Malaysia. Beijing denounced the second inauguration of Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, and pointedly dropped the word peaceful from its annual call for unification with the island democracy.
"Chinese troops squared off again last week with India's along their contentious border in the Himalayas."
To warnings that China is risking Cold War II, Beijing seems to be responding: If a Cold War with the United States is the price of securing our strategic interests and position in Asia and the world, bring it on.
Beijing has put the ball in America's court. What do we do now?
Consider the list of nations with which China has territorial quarrels that have lately produced military clashes.
Beijing claims Indian lands China has occupied since their 1962 war.
China claims virtually all the islets and reefs in the South China Sea and now uses naval vessels to deal with the rival claimants of Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Beijing asserts that Taiwan and all of its offshore islands in the East China Sea belong to China. While the Senkaku Islands have long been controlled by Japan, China claims these islands as well.
As for protests of the suppression of Tibetans and incarceration in concentration camps of Muslim Uighurs and Kazakhs, Beijing brushes them off.
Should the U.S. seek sanctions on China if it crushes the resistance in Hong Kong, how many U.S. allies would support those sanctions, when, for Australia, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, China, not America, is their largest market and trading partner?
How did we allow ourselves to get into this position where a lately backward China is suddenly a greater rival for global hegemony than was the Soviet Union of Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev?
Said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ruefully this month:
"China's been ruled by a brutal, authoritarian regime, a communist regime since 1949. For several decades, we thought the regime would become more like us through trade, scientific exchanges, diplomatic outreach ... (but) that didn't happen.
"We greatly underestimated the degree to which Beijing is ideologically and politically hostile to free nations. The whole world is waking up to that fact."
Yet, the rising totalitarian power of China, even with its imperial ambitions undisguised, does not threaten the vital interests of the United States.
So, again, the question: If China is prepared for a Cold War II with the United States to establish its predominance, what are we prepared to do should China absorb Hong Kong and convert it into a second Shanghai?
What are we prepared to do if China puts new pressure on Taiwan and seizes offshore islands in the East China Sea, as she did in the South China Sea? Sanctions against Vladimir Putin's Russia to compel it to return Crimea and vacate eastern Ukraine have conspicuously failed.
Are we prepared to fight for any of the islands, none of which we claim and many of which we agree ultimately belong to Beijing?
The Chinese have stolen our intellectual property, coerced technology transfers from our businesses and sent spies posing as students into our universities to thieve our secrets.
Meanwhile, we allowed ourselves to become dependent on China for medicines and drugs vital to the health and the survival of millions of Americans.
Who did this to us? We did it to ourselves.
Bushie, globalist, free traitor Republicans need to have a come to Jesus moment and ADMIT HOW WRONG THEY WERE ABOUT EVERYTHING.
China’s economy is built on a smoldering powder keg of over a billion hungry Chinese. The epic spectacle of its self-destruction will be biblical.
Fixed it.
Yeah man they can’t afford for anything big to happen to them.
As we saw, they may be quite modern in infrastructure but they were woefully inadequate in logistics and distribution.
XI Pooh, Iran, Cuba, Russia,they all are just waiting for a Dem to get back into the Oval Office. Biden is their first and obvious choice, he’s wholly owned by them, but any ol’ Dem’ll do ya. Hatred of the American Ideal and love of power cloaked in the Marxist Ideal is their common bond.
I once wrote a letter to Bill Clinton. In it, I said that it was a big mistake pushing for China’s elevation to “Most Favored Nation” status with regard to trade with China. I received a form letter in the mail, thanking me.
I was right then, and I’m right now. China is no friend of ours.
But, I also feel that once again, we have been underestimated. China is no match, economically or politically, to the United States. They have become as arrogant as the Japanese had become in the 80’s.
We need to begin, as Trump has, forcing them to put up or shut up. They’ve been premature in their so called ascendancy. They aren’t ready. It’s like they’ve been pushed beyond their realistic limits and they can’t see beyond themselves.
If Trump gets another term, it’s curtains for China as one contiguous nation. They think “now or never”, I think “never is now”
Agreed. This is their Achilles
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is on life support.
They can reclaim Hong Kong only to watch the rest of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) disintegrate as did the Soviet Union.
The CCP and PRC are vitally dependent on foreign trade to feed their people. Isolationism is LETHAL to them.
Who knew? The Soi Bois with all their “Free Tibet” bumper stickers may get their wish.
“The average unemployed for the unemployed is 127 percent more than they were making.l
My sister is a waitress. She worked through the entire situation doing pick up orders. Her coworkers are not returning because they are making over $800 a WEEK not working. For people in N.Y. or California that may not sound all that great, but that’s a damn good paycheck in lower Alabama.
There’s a TREMENDOUS difference in monthly expenses between Alabama and New York.
I would image 800 cash there is the equivalent of 1600 or more here.
No one wants to go back to work making 100s more at home.
But the jobs lost in NY i’m guessing were jobs that paid 40k and under also, so they’re looking at 1000 a week.
That’s not a fortune here but it’s still nice. Even if you were making 700 a week here before the layoffs, an extra 1200 a month is nice
True. Buchanan makes the all-too common serious error of attributing the devastating economic and social effects of the lockdown of America to the Chinese virus (as some even attribute the damage to “The Experts”) rather than where the blame clearly belongs ... completely on the governors and other hack politicians as well as on the “media”.
“Xi Jinping’s China suddenly appears eager for a showdown with the United States for long-term supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and the world.”
The Japanese tried that. We dropped a piece of the Sun on them.
Twice.
L
“Yet, the rising totalitarian power of China, even with its imperial ambitions undisguised, does not threaten the vital interests of the United States.”
Pat has gone completely insane. I mean gibbering, drooling, barking moon bat, s***house rat crazy.
L
It is not just our politicians. It is every company that saw the 1.5 billion people and thought what an opportunity to sell something to this emerging country.
I see it all the time in the lumber trade. Companies in western Canada currently sell much of their low grade lumber(#3 & #4) to China because it nets a higher return FOB mill than does selling it to other places in the world, like the USA. This is a result of the tariff on Canadian lumber of 20% coming into the US.
Up until the Chinese imposed a tariff on US lumber much of the low grade Southern Yellow Pine lumber went to China. The tariff has reduced the return to the sawmill in the southern US. Therefore, more of that lumber is staying in the US or going to other foreign countries in the Caribbean.
So, really it is mostly about plain old capitalism and greed. Who will pay you more money for the product you produce. If it is China, companies sell there. If it is a better return somewhere else then that is where it goes.
FYI, China buys a tremendous amount of low grade lumber to make all those pallets, crates, etc to ship all of their crap back here to Walmart, Home Depot, Lowes, etc.
They do not build houses out of lumber like we do. Most of the housing is multifamily built with concrete. They do use a lot of lumber for concrete forming. What little higher grade lumber they buy goes into furniture parts.
Cheap Chinese steel, like cheap Chinese drywall (used in Southern States during the building boom) isn't going to be an easy sell compared to American quality.
The world is waking up to what "Made in China" really means.
Some of us have boycotted China for decades already, seeking out American Made where ever possible first, and ABC (Anywhere But China) where no other American options exist.
By the way, my employer (a large multi-national bank based in the U.S.) was so concerned about networking, storage, print and compute devices we own having any Chinese firmware in them that we paid a handsome sum to have our devices audited and we've removed those found from our environment.
I know for a fact we're not the only financial services firm doing that.
Some on here would be amazed at what's happening across America right now to eliminate "Made in China".
Too bad that a small vial of VX couldn’t have been introduced to the meeting taking out xi, the CCP Central committee, and the military leadership.
We live on timber property in southern Oregon, Douglas Fir timber. We harvested about 35 acres 4 years ago, every tree was sold to Roseburg Forest Products. The bigger trees went to the Riddle mill and the smaller went to the Dillard mill. All the Cedars went to a mill in Roseburg. Everyone of our trees went to local buyers for lumber.
BTW, Roseburg Forest Products the biggest employer in our county has divested all its holdings in CA, 1031 Exchanged them to North and South Carolina. Oregon is next.
“Her coworkers are not returning because they are making over $800 a WEEK not working.”
If they’re refusing to go back to work, then their unemployment should be cut off.
Outside of some of the mom and pop small businesses that may have gone tits up, the vast majority of the jobs are still there for employees to go back to.
Uh, no. All they have done is force us to do a dry run of our systems and fix what was lacking, which we are, and will. The low mortality rate of the COVID is what convinces me that this was not a deliberate release, but accidental. If it "was" deliberate, it was really, really ineptly done.
I worked as a consultant with LLNL on development of automated biowarfare detection instrumentation to run 24/7 and could identify multiple agents with each analysis (ten years ago). I'm sure the tech is a lot better now, and as a result of this, will likely be upgraded several notches.
And THE WORST thing that the individual Americans can do to China is simply....DON'T BUY THEIR PRODUCTS. Buy American, or Japanese, South Korean, Taiwanese, Thai, Viet, Indian....anything but Chinese.
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