A senior U.S. official claimed that “China has benefited from both ends of the world,” but was refuted on the spot.
On February 21, local time, the Atlantic Council, a US think tank, held a two-day discussion titled “China to the Global South: Development and Influence in the Changing Global Order.” This comes on the heels of another report they released recently on how, believe it or not, the U.S. might use nukes to deal with China.
I conclude the Atlantic Council has certainly decided to stir the pot and shake the trees a bit. Let’s consider the remarks of Daniel Kritenbrink, he is State Dept Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affair declaring that “China benefits from both ends.” Suggesting that the United States somehow doesn’t?…and that China intentionally undermines stability in some areas…that’s rich.
In addition, Kangda also deliberately sows relations between China and the Global South, claiming that “China is aggressive” and “the United States’ policy towards the Global South is not to force countries to make choices.” However, some of those present at the meeting disagreed with his remarks.
Several of the diplomats in attendance including Singapore disagreed suggesting the United States avoid its “sanctimonious diplomacy”, pointing out that China knows much better and is doing much better in the Global South. Let me remind you that on the African continent China in a project spree of building out roads, rails, schools, hospitals, bridges & ports to modernize the country much in the same way it learned to do successfully back home, raising over 500 million of its citizens out of poverty along the way.
I fully agree and see as well that China itself has benefited tremendously from the stability and opportunities brought by the international order. That would include the decisions of the leaders of U.S. Fortune 500 companies to shut down their own manufacturing at home and farm it out to China. China didn’t twist their arm to do that.
U.S. corporate executives did not have to decimate the U.S. manufacturing sector which caused the loss of millions of jobs while creating mega profits for the company’s executives and shareholders instead. That was their choice as the leaders of those American companies.
Instead of considering those decisions and the problems they are causing domestically at home for American households in the United States, Kritenbrink wants us to pay attention to China’s supposed aggression in the South China Sea. But I checked and China’s claims in the South China have not expanded one single bit since all of the same original and competing claims dating all the way back to the 1940s.
Kritenbrink also pushed the message that China is promoting an alternative vision of global governance. On this point, I must agree.
The Atlantic Council’s Key Points on China in this piece titled The Longer Telegram, Toward a New American China Strategy, reads like a megalomaniac’s dreams come true.
“China has long had an integrated, operational strategy for dealing with the United States. The United States has so far had no such strategy with regard to China. This is a dereliction of national responsibility.” ( I have to fully agree)
“US strategy and policy toward China must be laser-focused on the fault lines among Xi and his inner circle–aimed at changing their objectives and behavior and thus their strategic course. ( Get internally on the inside of the CPC and change their behavior & objectives? Is this for real? ) Communist Party elites are much more divided about Xi’s leadership and vast ambitions than is widely appreciated.” (No, I don’t believe they are very divided internally )
“The foremost goal of US strategy should be to cause China’s ruling elites to conclude that it is in China’s best interests to continue operating within the US-led liberal international order ( A U.S. led by an endless string of wars…how do they think China would ever join that? Its exactly what China & the rest of the world is trying to break. They’ll sure as hell never join it. ) rather than building a rival order, and that it is in the Chinese Communist Party’s best interests to not attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores.” (Not expand globally? I can’t even believe I’m reading this stuff. They already DOMINATE world trade & manufacturing. The future is obviously BRICS, ASEAN, RCEP, BRI…and they are not trying to expand their “political model” and never have.
Most followers of China related developments clearly understand China is calling for a peaceful, multilateral cooperative global order through organizations like BRICS, RCEP and ASEAN along with its BRI projects. This is definitely a different experience for the world’s citizens which up to now has been under a U.S. led unilateral order which over the past many decades has undoubtedly created substantial and significant improvements for mankind across the world, but at what cost?
We must ask this question, because at the same time, that same U.S. led unilateral world order has been underpinned by a U.S. foreign policy which uses the bloodshed of war as a primary strategic tool to get what it wants. The world is in a chronic U.S. led string of wars & other violent covert military & government regime change actions with a body count of innocent civilians in the millions. We are all still witnessing such events right now in Ukraine and Gaza and the world is horrified.
Many U.S. leaders including Kritenbrink and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken have made it clear they understand the relationship between the United States and China is a fierce strategic competition, and at the same time , the United States is committed to managing this competition responsibly to avoid miscalculation or conflict. But then they turn around and sell more weapons to Taiwan and then insult China’s primary global initiatives, the Global Development Initiative which is happening in peace, the Global Security Initiative which is happening in peace, its Global Civilization Initiative which is happening in peace, and its Belt & Road Project reviving the Silk Road east, also happening in peace, all of which the U.S. decided at this conference to dismiss by calling it nothing more than “external propaganda”
Kritenbrink shared that Washington is still focused on persuasion rather than pressure on developing countries, that they want countries to be able to choose between us and China without coercion,” he said. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning reminds us that China’s position & belief is that every country should have its own place in the international system and can play its due role; the destiny of the world should be jointly controlled by all countries, and the future of the world needs to be created jointly by everyone and that part of the vision of unity & cooperation promoting global development is to jointly defend world peace.
I am constantly struck by the lack of appreciation and admiration for China on this fundamental right for all mankind, the right to live in peace, the right for innocent civilians to not be attacked and killed, in fact the opposite, the right to be protected by the world’s leading global superpowers, the exact opposite of what we are witnessing.
The CPC has more emphatically than ever shown the world its utter refusal to get involved in any wars in almost half a century. In our own lifetimes, we are witnessing the first country ever in the history of mankind to become the world’s next global superpower without war, without bloodshed, in peace.