Guest post by Ted Malloch author of Davos, Aspen and Yale
In one corner you have the wannabe giant, yet still red communist totalitarian state leader who is the new favorite “champion of globalization.”
China’s economy is a paper tiger, one that depends on propping up state-owned crony enterprises, manipulating its currency, stealing intellectual property and forcing technology transfers from everyone it does business with.
See this White House report for the proof.
It uses slave labor and has literally no environmental, health or safety standards.
It disrespects religious freedom and has no regard for human rights, privacy or property.
It has become a surveillance state spying constantly on all its citizenry.
Based on this nefarious Chinese model of ‘authoritarian proto-capitalism’, one party rule and its army control of the entire export-led growth, it has manufactured “success” over decades.
They alone are its sole beneficiaries.
China has gamed the world economic system and challenged its longstanding archrival.
That rival, finally led by a no-nonsense president, in the opposing corner, is the world’s largest, most innovative and productive economy—ever, a true heavyweight.
The economy it runs uses a free market model, incentivized by the profit motive and rewarding hard working individuals and companies where shareholders and society benefit.
The US has seen its zenith rise and owned the last century — and it continues to dominate this one.
It is exceptional in every way.
The US economy is today growing stronger than it has in many decades, our unemployment is at record lows, and the US stock market at all time highs. Its currency is the world’s reserve and as good as gold.
America is resurging with Trump at the helm and because he is calling the shots.
No longer are the Democrat and RINO elites sympathetic to globalism and its proxy China, managing America’s so-called, “inevitable” decline.
The predatory polices of China are Trump’s target and that of his vigilant USTR, Ambassador Robert Lighthizer.
Today negotiations with China have broken down because the Chinese reneged on a fair deal; so now the tariffs on Chinese goods move to 25 per cent.
Why stop there?
Give Mr Xi 30 days and take them to 50 per cent; and then to 100 per cent.
They created the trade imbalance and have everything to lose.
Trump has rejected the status quo and its globalist assumptions of fictional free trade in a globalized economy.
In fact, this free trade isn’t really ”free” at all, if you destroy your jobs, the middle class and manufacturing as a result.
It seemingly benefitted everyone — except real Americans.
Huge multinationals liked it, billionaires profited, the lobbyists made zillions, and the political class (from Biden to McConnell) all cashed in.
The truth is the CCP needs the USA more than we need them and their literal “cheap and inferior shit.”
China is a paper tiger when you take a look behind the numbers.
Its’ economy is built on sand and is crumbling.
The Communist Party refuses to dismantle its old state-led system and industrial policies because doing so would crash the Party and bankrupt the corrupt innermost apparatchik circle.
Its’ Belt & Road Initiative is just the latest way to expand China’s mercantilist economic model on the rest of the world.
China growth of 6 per cent or more is very dubious; as are much of the economic statistics it reports.
Fake.
The economy is based almost entirely on government spending—not private expansion.
Truthfully, this trade war was inevitable – It is a war between State-owned enterprises and the free market.
It is only the beginning of something much larger.
The US and Trump will and must stop Chinese pretensions and military cum imperial ambitions, not only in the South China Sea but also across the board — before it is too late.
Here are three primary things the US needs to do now to combat China’s rampant aggression.
China has a choice to make?
Will it move from communist to consumerist?
From atheist and totalitarian to pluralist?
From stagnant economy to an innovative, free and open one?
Or will China continue, regardless the pressure and the effect, to remain strangled by its foolish, outmoded communist ideology, brutal ruling elitist one party system, and its growing militarism?
1 Trump should exert maximum pressure and NOT cave in. He should expose China for what it is. Have a national telecast from the White House Oval Office and spell out the firm options for China tonight. Read them the riot act and abide by it.
2 Have US consumers, companies, and capital markets disengage with China. Cut them out and off. There are better, cheaper and closer markets and partners — so lay down the law, twist some arms.
3 Spell out a firm multilayered US geo-strategy outlining deterrence options in Asia focused on defeating China. This includes everything from naval exercises to assistance to diplomacy in order to challenge China’s overreaching ambitions — economically and militarily.
China is not our friend.
Repeat, China is not our friend…
You won’t hear that from the mainstream media — who has oddly become the mouthpiece for China.
China is rapacious. “There are people who wish I wouldn’t refer to China as our enemy. But that’s exactly what they are,” Trump said, in his campaign manifesto, Great Again.
It is time, as our President has effectively reminded us all, time and again, to see them as our foremost adversary.
Time for a Knock Out.
