November 16, 2023 - 10:00am
Xi Jinping should have entered San Francisco’s Apec conference with his tail between his legs, but instead has emerged as something closer to the king of the world. China may be experiencing tepid growth, a bloated real estate market, low industrial production, and an increasingly alienated youth yet, in spite of these factors, he appears to be wearing the crown.
To reach for this kind of power, being a dictator is helpful. One can force an agenda on one’s nation and the world without worrying too much about domestic critics. It certainly works with foreigners: after all, Xi’s mere presence has led San Francisco to clean itself up, something it has not managed for the last decade.
It’s also worth comparing Xi to his counterparts. Besides him, Western leaders are doing little to impress — not least his host, the doddering Joe Biden, whose own party does not even want him to run. There’s not a Churchill, Roosevelt or even a Reagan in the bunch. Biden was even prevented from unveiling a proposed new trade deal in San Francisco with Asia’s other economies due to opposition from his own party.
Strategically, Xi has the West exactly where he wants it. China agreed to US climate proposals in San Francisco this week. The demands for more wind and solar energy, as well as electric vehicles, assure an industrial supremacy for the country that produces more greenhouse gases than the entire developed world put together. China already boasts a huge lead in solar battery production, and increasingly dominates the production of rare-earth elements, which are critical to wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles.
As American EV firms struggle with production and supply chain issues, China’s Warren Buffett-backed BYD has emerged as the world’s top electric vehicle manufacturer, with big export ambitions, while Tesla focuses much of its future growth at its Chinese factories. Meanwhile, the Net Zero policies of the West are already unravelling Germany’s industrial economy, which is losing much of its industrial base, notably in chemicals and vehicles.
Like the former Soviet Union, China has found many “useful idiots” in the American establishment, including on Wall Street, Silicon Valley and, it appears, within the Biden family. China has also found ways to influence politicians in Australia and Canada. And we certainly can’t expect a stiff upper lip from Britain’s new Foreign Secretary, former prime minister David Cameron, who can be counted on to wear out conference carpets with his kowtowing.
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Subscribe“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Sun Tzu
“Bloated real estate market, low industrial production and alienated youth”
Lol the pot calling the kettle black
Meanwhile, the hapless UK Government is planning to increase by 66% the amount it – we – pay for offshore wind energy. Guaranteeing more dosh for China.
We can only weep. Democracy appears to be dead.
Is that true ?
I’m always reading that wind energy is dirt cheap these days and that the only practical problem is that it’s not “always on”. But you’re saying the price is directly controlled (essentially subsidised then ?) by the government ?
I don’t think there is any doubt that Xi intends to reunite Taiwan with mainland China. He has made that perfectly clear, and the truth of the matter is that there is nothing the West/US can do to prevent this. The US can’t win a war on Chinese turf – that is simply a logistic impossibility. And the US is wholly reliant on China for manufactured goods. Basically checkmate unless the West decides to build up its industrial capacity once again and become self-sufficient. And on top of that it really doesn’t help having somebody like Biden, who likely doesn’t know what day it is, and is naive acolytes heading up the state department, negotiate with somebody as sharp as Xi.
Xi wants very badly to be the one to take over Taiwan and he knows he isn’t getting any younger. I’m sure he’s hoping/expecting the January election to give him a Taiwan president who will cooperate with him in turning Taiwan into another Hong Kong. If that doesn’t happen he will eventually blockade the place and his Navy is bigger than ours.
And to imagine the absurdity of having “military goods” being manufactured in China?
China’s got incredible vulnerabilities–dense population, for example, dams all over the place–that make a war an incredible gamble even if ‘won’. If this weren’t so they’d have invaded decades ago.
To win at chess, you don’t need to be a grandmaster, you just need to be smarter than your opponent
Joe Biden has dementia, so it’s easy for Putin and Xi
Biden is senile and doesn’t run anything.
It is the entire governing class that controls him and everything else that is happy to sell out the American people, whom they despise, as long as they get enough of the grift. The Chinese know this and play the game very well.
In fairness, the MIC has recognized the problem and is at least attempting to correct the obvious stupidity of depending on a military rival to manufacture the parts for our military equipment, but factories take time to build, and supply chain realignments happen slowly. I’m of the opinion the Biden administration is run through the Pentagon these days and well aware of the problems.
Both sides are stalling for time. China is stalling because contrary to what Xi would have us believe, he does NOT yet have the naval assets to take Taiwan by force assuming American intervention, and a blockade of Taiwan could easily be matched by an oil embargo enforced from much farther out where America’s Navy is still well beyond anything the Chinese can muster. What he needs is an overwhelming force that would take Taiwan too quickly for America to counter and/or to build enough infrastructure to replace middle eastern oil with Russian oil.
America, on the other hand, needs time for reshoring schemes to work and to get its military supply chains moved to friendlier locales. The globalist establishment and the progressives would like to stop this but they can’t, so whoever pulls Biden’s strings (probably Pentagon strategists) is giving them climate agreements that neither side really intends to honor and won’t mean jack squat ten years from now when the conflict really gets going. This is a temporary truce, not a detente. This author seems to think it’s still 2015 and the USA is still ignoring the problems for the sake of temporary profits, but that simply isn’t the case. The reality is that mistakes were made over the past two decades that can’t be fixed in a few months. Geopolitics is a grand game and in such a contest, a few bland speeches and empty climate pledges ultimately amount to very little. This author pays too much attention to what governments say and too little to their actions in the context of broader long term strategies and interests.
I hope you’re right and we’re working our way out of this disaster. The other thing that needs to be done is to eliminate the fifth columnists infesting the universities, media and government.
I was surprised that Biden’s handlers even took the meeting. There was nothing to gain from giving Xi a photo op and a bully pulpit.
The agenda in the US, at the moment, largely aligns with Xi’s. Reshoring semi production from Taiwan means the clock is ticking until Formosa does not matter, any more.
Yes, this. Americans don’t really want to fight over Taiwan, but we can’t replace TSMC’s production capability instantly. I assume this summit was mostly a show to placate climate alarmists, centrist free traders, and others whose votes he needs prior to the election year. Whether it helps him or hurts him is arguable.
I popped over to the alienated youth article on The Daily Beast and have to cheer on the young people of China for making a decision to step back from the mad pace of overachieving. Good for them!
Why must the author assume that China and the US are locked in an existential struggle for world domination? Why can’t we view the situation as cooperative, since China does have the resources and manufacturing capability to advance the world’s urgent transition from carbon emissions, which the US and Germany lack? (By the way, on a per capita basis, China’s emissions are half those of the US). Why must we prepare for WW3 over Taiwan or the Spratly Islands?
Why? Because that has been the hallmark of human existence since the beginning of mankind.
Life is about the survival of the fittest with scarce resources. What you suggest assumes the U.S.-China relationship is mutually beneficial. For decades now, the United States has sold off its assets to other players for the benefit of a few Americans and other rising empires, most notably China, at the distracted American peoples’ expense. In any healthy, non-suicidal society, the people and the aristocracy align their interests for the betterment of both parties and the flourishment of the society at large. That has ceased to exist in American society.
What you have today is an American aristocracy that works for themselves, China, and other powers at the expense of its own people so that these pseudo-intellectual elites can enrich their egos and brag about “progress” toward the latest trend. Meanwhile, the people themselves have been propagandized to believe that they actually have a stake in the aristocracy’s new “goals” but serve no meaningful purpose besides consumption and self-annihilation.
Long gone are the higher-level, groundbreaking goals that Americans once had to reach new frontiers across all of society and be an example for the world to see of what happens when the “little guy” is given a chance to pursue their own “American” dream (landing on the moon, developing atomic energy, and so on.) Now, China is going to produce everything needed to fuel our aristocracy’s latest gimmick so that the peasants can angrily post on social media about saving the planet. Meanwhile, China will make money selling Americans the latest new consumer goody on credit, which in actuality would negate said climate goals anyway…assuming that’s even a meaningful target in the first place and not something designed to keep the people distracted and prevent them from questioning their corrupt “leaders.”
Describing the boxing match between the U.S. and China as an “existential struggle for world domination” is also a misnomer. Even at the heights of the Cold War when America was a powerhouse (and not a decaying empire as it is today) and the USSR was the “enemy,” the battle was more akin to a high-stakes chess match, with the winner posed to influence global perspectives on how a society should be designed and perform. That, in and of itself, is a naive, American viewpoint of world power struggles–something the Chinese surely do not view the same way given their long history and experience in the world.
With America actively receding off into the sunset and looking for “cooperation” with its successor while the rising China seeks to influence the world as its new leader, we are by default proving to the world that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is inherently superior to Western “democracy.” If that’s how Americans seek to finish their story off in the history books, then I suppose what you suggested is a great way to achieve that.
To distract from the fact that the US and European elites have sold out their people? A “wag the dog” action that they like to accuse others of doing–confession through projection.
You are right to ask the question. The problem is that we are not comparing like with like when we talk about China and the USA – yet!! Traditionally, China is an autocracy so one man can dictate to millions of others and the USA is a democracy, where everyone can criticise the president – in theory. So an agreement between the two is difficult to achieve; if one president of China dies and another takes over, he can just change everything as he wishes. An agreement between the two would be difficult.
But the USA is changing. It is getting more difficult to criticise things. The government has come up with ‘liberal’ plans which just can’t be criticised. So the USA approaches China and will be roughly the same in, say, 15 years. Then war is inevitable.
Because that’s what’s going on, Neville.