Mahbubani: Why China and USA Clash

Why China and USA Clash

The US China geopolitical contest which the United States has launched is driven by deep structural forces. President Donald Trump started this contest. He was defeated in the 2020 election. 

President Joe Biden came in, he disagreed with Donald Trump on everything except on China. President Joe Biden has not been able to lift a single tariff on China. Not one. That shows that personalities is not what is driving this contest.

It's structural forces and we must understand these structural forces. So what are the structural forces? There are at least three. The first is that, and this is an iron law of geopolitics, that has been around for 2,000 maybe 3,000 years. Whenever the world's number one emerging power, which today is China, is about to overtake the world's number one power, which today is United States. The world's number one power always pushes down the world's number one emerging power. And this has been happening for 2,000 years. So in some ways when the United States is fighting so hard to retain his number one position is actually behaving very normally. This is what all great powers have done for thousands of years.

But what is puzzling, you know, and I say this because I've been in the United States now for one week and I am actually surprised that even though as I explained later it may not necessarily be in United States interest to launch this contest against China. There is a rock solid consensus in the American body politic and when I speak to so many Americans here and I've been here for one week now they seem determined to stand up to China even though it may not necessarily be in the American interest. So this is what in many ways is driving this contest, this enormous desire of the United States to remain number one in the world. So that's the first factor that's making it inevitable.

The second factor that's making this contest inevitable is the first one by the way I want to emphasize everybody talks about it. Mr. Wong Huya mentioned Graham Ellison he's also written a book as you know about the inevitability of war within US and China and then he he talks about this what he calls the thucydides trap. So the first point I made everybody knows about but the second point I'm going to make nobody talks about especially in the US because it's politically incorrect to mention it because the second structural force that's driving this contest is what I call the fear of the yellow peril.

Now the fear of the yellow peril has laid buried in the western imagination for 800 years. And by the way I want to explain that this fear is not an imagination of mine because it has surfaced in American history. And about 130 years ago you should know this historical fact. The United States Congress passed an act called the Chinese racial exclusion act. Let me repeat that. The Chinese racial exclusion act. So that is a very powerful demonstration of the fear of the yellow peril. So when we try to analyze and understand this US China contest, we try to look for the rational factors that are driving it. 

But there also emotional factors and these emotional factors are also very powerful. And when I said earlier that having been in the United States now for one week, I can feel the emotions towards China have become very very negative. But I have to be here to feel it, to absorb it before I can confirm it. And that's what I've experienced this very powerful emotional reaction to China.

And the third structural force that's also driving this contest is a kind of a bipartisan disappointment in the United States that American engagement with China has not created a liberal democracy in China. Now this is again not something I'm imagining because as you'll see in my book I quote a very important American official in the Biden administration his name is Kurt Campbell and he published an essay in the magazine Foreign Affairs I think with another official called Elli Rner and he said that the Americans believed that after America opened up China economically, China would also open up politically, China would become a liberal democracy and America and China would live happily ever after. 

Now, as you can tell from the way I'm saying it, it sounds like a fairy tale. And it is a fairy tale because in many ways it's very puzzling and this is what my book tries to do, to try and in a sense explain Chinese history to the Americans that how is it a country like United States which is only less than 250 years old with one quarter the population of China. America believe, hey, we can change China, which has got a population four times the size of America and a history that is 4,000 years old at least, maybe 5,000 years.

So, what was behind this American belief that this young American republic could transform one of the most ancient civilizations that we have today? But that in itself is an indication the misunderstandings that Americans have which is what my book tries to point out. 

The other paradox is that even though the United States has launched this contest against China it doesn't have a strategy. I happened to have a one-on-one lunch with uh America's greatest living strategic thinker Henry Kissinger. And at that lunch he said to me, you know, and he allowed me to quote me quote him as saying that that United States doesn't have a strategy for managing China. But even if he hadn't said it to me, it's pretty obvious because when America launched this geopolitical contest against China, it hasn't specified what are its objectives. 

What does America hope to accomplish in launching this contest against China? It could be number one isolating China from the rest of the world as it succeeded in doing with the Soviet Union, containing the Soviet Union. It could be overthrowing the Communist Party of China. It could be preventing China from becoming the number one economy in the world. And I suggest these three objectives because if you analyze them, none of these three objectives are achievable.

Now, if you want to launch a contest, you must have very clear objectives. What are you trying to accomplish? And the United States has never specified and never understood what it wants to do with SV China. And so that's the other paradox about the United States decision to launch this contest against China. 

But having said that, let me now turn to the other half of the first paradox I spoke about which is that while it is inevitable, it is also avoidable. So why is this contest avoidable? And there are several reasons. In fact, in my last chapter of my book, I talk about the five non-contradictions between US and China. And I hope if you have a chance to read the book, uh please look at the five non-contradictions.

By the way, the phrase non-contradiction itself is a very clumsy English phrase that is very rarely used, but I use it just to just to explain why this is so unusual because there's actually no fundamental reason why the US and China should clash with each other. And so, let me give you two examples of why the United States and China should not clash with each other. 

The first reason is that if the fundamental national interest of United States and if the fundamental national interest of China is to improve the well-being of their people to make them improve their living standards and make them better and so on so forth then frankly the US and China should be working together because they have a common interest in improving the well-being of their people and if they cooperate, if they trade with each other, they will get better, right?

And the tragedy here is that the United States is the only major developed country where the average income of the bottom 50 50% has not improved for three decades. And the living conditions of the bottom 50% have deteriorated. In fact, there's another Nobel laureate Angus Don whom I quote in my book who's published a book called Deaths of Despair and he talks about how you know all the indicators of well-being are deteriorating in America. 

Life expectancy is coming down. Shocking in a major developed country, right? And poverty is growing. suicides are growing. That's very sad. So if the primary interest of the United States is to improve the well-being of its people, it should logically press the pause button on the geopolitical contest against China and actually work with China to improve the well-being of its people.

And as you will see in the book, I discuss that in some detail of how they can cooperate on things like infrastructure and other areas to improve their well-being. So that's one area where there's a non-contradiction. The second area where there's a non-contradiction and where actually US and China should work together is in the area of global challenges. Clearly United States and China face common global challenges and we've seen this in  covid-19 has shown how much the world has shrunk and how much we are all as Kofi Anan the late UN General will say we're now living in the same global village. It's no longer a huge planet. It is one small global village.

So anything that happens to us affects all of us. So we should be cooperating. If you live in a village, you should be cooperating to fight against the common dangers whether it's COVID 19 or if it's climate change and you cannot solve climate change unless US and China collaborate. So you can see they're very powerful reasons why US and China should collaborate. So that's what I'm trying to achieve in my book to try and persuade both countries. Please press the pause button on what you are doing and focus on cooperating because that's what the world wants you to do.

I have a whole chapter in my book which says that out of the 7.8 billion people in the world. There are 330 million who live in United States. There are 1.4 billion who live in China. But there's still six billion people who live outside the United States and China. And these six billion people if you ask them privately confidentially would you like the US China geopolitical contest to accelerate or would you like us and China to stop this contest? And I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of the 6 billion people who live outside US and China want both countries to say stop this contest because it is not helping anybody. It is not helping the United States, is not helping China and is not helping the rest of the world.

And I can tell you as someone who lives in Southeast Asia, as you know, which is just south of China, if you did a poll of the 650 million people who live in ASEAN, they will say that they want this contest to pause because the Southeast Asian countries want to have good relations with United States and they want to have good relations with China and they don't want to be forced to choose. And that's the view of the overwhelming majority of the world's population. 

So in that sense I hope that my book will be helpful to both US and China because it will help to persuade them that given the larger global challenges that we face. Let's come together, work together and defeat these common challenges and press the pause button on this geopolitical contest. Thank you very much.

fentanyl imports

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg93nn1e6go

In 2019, China classified fentanyl as a controlled narcotic and later added some of the chemicals used to make it to the list.

Despite this, the trade in other chemicals involved in the manufacturing of fentanyl - some of which can have legitimate purposes - remain uncontrolled, as those involved in the trade find new ways to evade the law.

A review of several US indictments, which include details of undercover agents communicating with Chinese manufacturers, suggests that some chemical companies in China have been selling chemicals - including controlled ones - in the knowledge that they are intended to make fentanyl.

Mahbubani: War with China should be avoided

This is WHY the USA Will LOSE to China

What inspired you to write this book?

Professor Kishore Mahbubani:
Well, I see a great tragedy coming and it's a completely unnecessary tragedy. This coming geopolitical contest between the United States and China. And the basic message of my book is a very simple one, which is that a geopolitical contest between the United States and China is both inevitable and avoidable. So I try to explain in the main part of my book why it's inevitable and why also the United States should really think very hard and deep before it plunges into this geopolitical contest with China.

What I try to point out in the book is that there are lots of misconceptions that Americans have about their own strengths and about China's weaknesses. It is taken as an ideological certainty that when a thriving democracy takes on a geopolitical struggle against the communist party system, the thriving democracy will always win as it demonstrated in the first world war against the Soviet Union. But then if you dig deeper and you try to understand what is the core situation of American society today and the core situation of Chinese society, you discover that the United States is actually having to deal with some major structural challenges.

One of the key structural challenges is that the average income of the bottom 50% of the American population has been sliding down over a 30-year period. And as I try to analyze in the book, this is not just an accident. This is a result of deep structural forces in American society that have moved America away from being a thriving democracy towards becoming a plutoaucracy.

And by contrast, China in the 30-year period where the average income of the bottom 50% in America has been sliding down, this in the same 30-year period, the bottom 50% in China have had their best 30 years in 3,000 years. So at a time when the Chinese people are experiencing the most amazing improvements in their standard of living, you must remember also for most of Chinese history, the bottom 50% struggle to survive. They would die in famines and civil wars and they had a very rough life and the last 30 years they have access to education, housing, health care, travel in a way they never ever had before in their lives.

So after China has gone through the best 30-year period ever under the Chinese Communist Party, the United States is telling the Chinese people, why don't you get rid of Chinese Communist Party? And the Chinese people are scratching their head and say, "Excuse me, you know, I've had the best 30 years." And the Chinese Communist Party is succeeding because while in theory it is still a Communist Party, it is a Communist Party that is the exact opposite of the Soviet Communist Party because the Soviet Communist Party was run by all apparatchiks.

The Chinese Communist Party may possibly be the most meritocratic political party in the world and the selection process results in the best minds running China today. You met somebody you know you know Wangi Shan you know how brilliant these people are. So by by going into this old ideological reflex and saying hey democracies can always overcome communist parties. The United States hasn't done a deeper analysis and realize that this is not a contest within a democracy and a communist party system.

It's a contest between a plutoaucracy and a meritocracy.

<Johnson>

You talked about it being a party of representation, how that is maintained, whether that is stable. It is still true for the last 30 years.

<Mahbubani>

You see at the end of the day, running China, keeping a country of 1.4 billion together every day is a massive challenge. Which is why for most of Chinese history, China has more often been divided than united. So the periods like what China has experienced in the last 30 years with the strong central government delivering phenomenal improvement in living standards to its people is very rare in Chinese history.

And so if you compare the record in governance of the Chinese Communist Party especially after Deng Xiaoing launched his four modernizations 40 years ago in 1979. It's quite amazing what China has accomplished and the Chinese must always measure the record of their governance not against what other countries have achieved but what has been achieved in Chinese history. And no Chinese government ever in Chinese history has improved the living standards of the Chinese people as much as the Chinese Communist Party has.

And you're right, I call it the Chinese civilization party because the main goal of the Chinese Communist Party is not to promote or to export communist ideology. The main goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to revive Chinese civilization and bring it back to the to the standing and respect that it used to enjoy in the world for over 2,000 years. And the key driving force in the Chinese mind which I think every American should be aware of is that the Chinese are acutely aware that they went through something like maybe 150 years of national humiliation starting from the opium war of 1842 probably you know going up to the Japanese occupation. 

So they've gone through a lot of humiliation and their desire therefore is to regain the respect that China used to enjoy and it is somewhat sad that just at the moment when the Chinese people feel that hey we are now finally achieving something meaningful that's the time when America decides to slap China and for them the only thing they remember is you see they're trying to humiliate us again. Well, I think you know the the the reason why I encourage uh Americans to think deeper is that if they look very carefully at the track record of what China is doing and what the Soviet Union is doing? 

It is actually quite shocking that in the geopolitical contest today between China and United States instead of China behaving like the Soviet Union it is the United States that's behaving like the Soviet Union because I explain in the book in one chapter I asked can America make U-turns. 

So for example the contest between United States and China will not take place in the military sphere. It will be in a nuclear war with the United China. There will not be a winner and a loser. There'll be a loser and loser. 

So logically, it should be in the interest of the United States therefore to reduce its defense budget and take the money and invest in R&D because that's where the real contest is. But the United States cannot reduce its defense budget because no matter how brilliant a defense secretary you have whether is Ash Carter or General Matters because the process of deciding where to spend money is locked in by the US Congress and allocations are made to each constituency by the congressman and therefore the defense budget is large, irrational and unnecessary. If the United States was serious about taking on China is to cut his defense budget into half but that's impossible and in that sense it's like the old Soviet Union that also couldn't cut his defense budget. 

So in that sense the United States hasn't thought very hard and very deep about how different this contest with China is whereas by contrast the Chinese are quite happy. They're growing their defense budget but at a fixed percentage of their GNP and not increasing it. 

And the Chinese are very happy that America has 13 aircraft carrier fleets because each aircraft carrier fleet is draining millions of dollars away from the US Treasury every day. And paradoxically in military terms an aircraft carrier today is a sitting duck. And as an American professor, Tim Cotton of Harvard told me, it just takes a $100,000 hypersonic missile to bring down a billion dollar aircraft carrier. So it doesn't make sense anymore. 

So clearly you need to have a fundamental strategic reboot in American thinking. And I'm in that sense, I'm trying to be helpful to America. I say think very hard about what are the big changes you need to make. 

racist Tom Cotton and China

 

https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/sen-tom-cotton-warns-china-poses-existential-threat-to-us-communist-arkansas-representative-seven-things-you-cant-say-about-china-military-war-president-donald-trump

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton on Tuesday issued a stark warning about Communist China, saying many of the threats the U.S. faces "are truly existential."

Cotton, who represents Arkansas and serves as the chairman of the Select Committee of Intelligence, detailed growing concerns about China's military activities and the implications for security.

https://alec.org/article/seven-things-you-cant-say-about-china-insights-from-us-senator-tom-cotton/

Senator Cotton outlines the seven critical truths about China that are often suppressed:

China is an evil empire;

China is preparing for war;

China is waging an economic world war;

China has infiltrated our society;

China has infiltrated our government;

China is coming for our kids;

China could win.

https://wccftech.com/whats-next-for-the-once-glorified-now-desperate-intel/

Senator Tom Cotton has played a role in shaping the Republican narrative, and one of his iconic incidents is when he called out TikTok's CEO Shou Zi Chew as a 'Chinese' despite his clarifications that he is a Singaporean

samarium

 https://archive.ph/fX6zY

China produces the entire world’s supply of samarium, a particularly obscure rare earth metal used almost entirely in military applications. Samarium magnets can withstand temperatures hot enough to melt lead without losing their magnetic force. They are essential for withstanding the heat of fast-moving electric motors in cramped spaces like the nose cones of missiles.

On April 4, China halted exports of seven kinds of rare earth metals, as well as magnets made from them. China controls most of the world’s supply of these metals and magnets. China’s Ministry of Commerce declared that these materials had both civilian and military uses, and any further exports would be allowed only with specially issued licenses. The move, according to the ministry, would “safeguard national security” and “fulfill international obligations such as nonproliferation.”

The main American user of samarium is Lockheed Martin, an aerospace and military contractor that puts about 50 pounds of samarium magnets in each F-35 fighter jet. Lockheed Martin responded to questions with a short statement: “We continuously assess the global rare earth supply chain to ensure access to critical materials that support our customers’ missions. Specific questions about the rare earth supply chain will be best addressed by the U.S. government.”

The Defense Department awarded $35 million to MP in early 2022 to start production of samarium and several other rare earths that China has now restricted. MP then spent $100 million, using a lot of its own money, to buy the necessary equipment to process them, said James Litinsky, the company’s chief executive.

The Biden administration soon after awarded $351 million to Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths to build a facility in Texas that would also produce samarium.

Mr. Litinsky said the market for samarium was so small that it would be uneconomical to have two producers in the United States. So MP never installed its samarium processing equipment, which is still in storage.

But Lynas never built its Texas factory, after a permit it had for rare earth mining in Malaysia that was in limbo was eventually renewed. Lynas did not respond to emails and phone calls for comment.

MP is willing to install its samarium processing equipment now only if promised better financial terms by customers, Mr. Litinsky noted. “We felt very burnt by the whole thing,” he said.

Growing almonds

 It's sad to hear people complain about using water to grow food when so much more water is wasted and dumped in the ocean.

Water is a precious resource but so is fertile land and a good climate. If you deny water to farmers you waste that land and climate. Is that a wise choice?

Why do people who complain about private ownership never consider the other side, how public ownership, such as the DMV, is often wasteful and poorly run, seldom providing even marginal service to customers.

Fusarium graminearum

While Fusarium graminearum is a dangerous lifeform, that makes it even more urgent to study it and understand it. This is what Jian's field of study was. She started in China and was invited (hired) to continue it in Michigan.

Feds say

Jian received her doctorate in plant pathogens from Zhejiang University, the complaint states. She received money from a Chinese foundation with backing from the Chinese government to conduct research on a fungus known as Fusarium graminearum, the complaint states.

Jian is a citizen of China who received a doctorate degree in plant pathogens from Zhejiang University

Liu researches the same pathogen, the agent wrote.

https://plantbiology.natsci.msu.edu/faculty_and_research/plb_interactions.aspx

What is

In the complaint submitted in the Department of Justice’s case against the scholar, 33-year-old Yunquing Jian, and her boyfriend, 34-year-old Zunyong Liu, prosecutors cite a 2004 paper published in the journal Molecular Plant Pathology titled “Heading for disaster: Fusarium Graminearum on cereal crops.”

Disaster

Plant pathologist study plant diseases in an effort to be able to control them. Every crop plant has a cadre of diseases that affect the way it can be used by people or at least affect its yield.

Progress

In a groundbreaking study published in Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, researchers have uncovered vital insights into the pathogenic mechanisms employed by Fusarium graminearum, a notorious fungal pathogen responsible for the devastating disease known as Fusarium head blight (FHB). This discovery could potentially pave the way for developing genetically engineered crops resistant to this harmful pathogen that significantly compromises wheat and barley production worldwide. The findings emphasize the importance of understanding plant-pathogen interactions at a molecular level, which is critical for enhancing crop resilience and ensuring global food security.

Arrest

F. graminearum is already widely prevalent across the U.S. in native grasses around the country as well as crops, scientists say. It spreads and thrives usually during wet weather, causing a common crop disease called Fusarium head blight or head scab, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service.

"It's extremely prevalent in North America. It likely arose in North America, so it's not like a foreign agent coming in. And it's already causing a lot of problems in U.S. agriculture," Harold Kistler, an adjunct professor at the University of Minnesota, told CBS News. Kistler said scientists believe F. graminearum likely originated in North America because all of its closest relatives have been found on the continent.

haiyan-sun