FROM EIR DAILY ALERT
Why All the British Squawking about China?
March 1, 2018 (EIRNS)—The British pretend that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s proposal to end term limits for the Chinese President is the reason for their current outburst of rage against China—but not everything they say is always true. Is it true that all they really fear is only that Xi might stay in office longer than Tony Blair did (ten years)?
More to the point is that U.S. President Donald Trump is publicly praising his excellent relations with the Chinese President, and realistically hopes that all economic relations can be sorted out between the two of them, leading to a “great trading relationship,” between them.
This real fear of the Brits is exacerbated by the fact that Xi Jinping’s top economic advisor Liu He, just inducted into the Politburo last October, has been in Washington since Feb. 27 for unannounced high-level meetings, and will stay here through March 3. Liu is the author of a study which compared the crisis of the 1930s Great Depression with that of 2008-09 crash through the present, and concluded among other things that the finance-friendly policy of the past decade, prevented the sort of recovery which the U.S. had experienced under Franklin Roosevelt.
This is the way to read the London Economist’s cover story of today, “How the West Got China Wrong”: “It bet that China would head towards democracy and the market economy. The gamble has failed,” which absurdly proclaims that, “Last weekend China stepped from autocracy into dictatorship. ... Mr. Xi has steered politics and economics towards repression, state control and confrontation.”
The Economist lies about the Belt and Road, which it says
is partly a scheme to develop China’s troubled west, but it also creates a Chinese-funded web of influence that includes pretty much any country willing to sign up....”
In their conclusions, the anonymous authors argue that
“China behaves as a regional superpower bent on driving America out of East Asia.... The pace of Chinese military modernization and investment is raising doubts about America’s long-run commitment to retain its dominance in the region.... Even as China’s challenge has become overt, America has been unwilling or unable to stop it.”
Now is the time to address China’s “abuses,” The Economist warns, because it will be “more dangerous” to challenge them later.
“In every sphere, therefore, policy needs to be harder edged, even as the West cleaves to the values it claims are universal. To counter China’s sharp power, Western societies should seek to shed light on links between independent foundations, even student groups, and the Chinese state. To counter China’s misuse of economic power, the West should scrutinize investments by state-owned companies and, with sensitive technologies, by Chinese companies of any kind. It should bolster institutions that defend the order it is trying to preserve.
“Rivalry between the reigning and rising superpowers need not lead to war. But Mr. Xi’s thirst for power has raised the chance of devastating instability. He may one day try to claim glory by retaking Taiwan.”
What nonsense!
