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It has been five years since the trade war began five years ago, and in the past five years, the two sides have exchanged almost all the means of unconventional warfare except hot war, that is, military conflict. Relations between the two countries have also hit rock bottom, and many people may not notice that China's current foreign minister is the previous ambassador to the United States, and the new minister has been in office for several months, but the post of ambassador to the United States is still empty. This new cold war, provoked by the king of understanding, taken over by the sleeping king and intensified, still shows no sign of ending. The 2024 US presidential election is about to begin again, no matter who the successor is, this war will still be likely to continue, and there is also the possibility that the Taiwan issue will evolve into a hot war, that is, a direct military conflict between China and the United States. Why did China and the United States still have a strategic cooperative relationship ten years ago, and even once there were such remarks as the G2 and China and the United States, but ten years later, the relations between the two countries deteriorated to this point?
Some people say that this is caused by different ideologies and social systems. It can only be said that there are certain ideological and social system factors in it, but they are only superficial, not the root cause. During the Sino-US honeymoon period in the eighties of the last century, why did the United States not mention the ideology of social system? In the first decade of this century, when the Chinese and American economies are complementary, why does the United States not talk about ideology?
In fact, the dispute between China and the United States is a struggle between geopolitics and currency politics, and in the final analysis, it is essentially a dispute of capital - the dispute between financial capital and industrial capital of the two countries. From the 80s of last century to the first decade of this century, China's introduction of foreign capital, while realizing industrialization, undertook the excess production capacity transferred by Western developed countries, objectively transferred and resolved domestic contradictions for them, and burdened them with resources and environmental baggage. At the same time, it anchors the local currency to the foreign exchange dominated by the US dollar, resulting in financial dependence.
In the first decade of this century, Sino-US relations experienced a period of strategic approach. The background is that at that time, the United States was fully engaged in the fight against the emerging euro financial bloc, which provoked the conflict in the Balkans and single-handedly destroyed the Saddam regime in Iraq, which challenged the hegemony of the dollar. At that time, China, with its high-quality infrastructure and business environment, attracted a large number of American manufacturing industries to transfer to China, using China's low cost for the cheapest production, and then sending these extremely low-priced products to the United States, helping the United States to suppress its inflation, so that the United States could free to issue a large amount of currency to support the war and fight the euro. China then exchanges its exports for this dollar foreign exchange, and then turns back to invest in the US treasury bond market to buy US bonds, which is equivalent to returning to the United States after a while in China's hands, and the United States takes this money to feed the world's largest army and continue to implement its hegemonic strategy against the world. China has objectively become a shadow assistant of the United States in implementing its global strategy. At that time, the financial capital group in the United States was singing about what the United States was doing, and even proposed the G2. But in fact, the average profit of US companies investing in China is as high as more than 20%, but China's profit from buying US bonds is only a measly 2%!
China exports a large number of goods to the United States at low prices, and then exports capital to the United States almost gratuitously, which is equivalent to peeling two layers of skin from the Chinese cow! Even if it is so exploited by others, after decades of hard work, China has become the world's second largest economy, the world's largest industrial country, the most complete industrial system, and the world's largest manufacturing capacity. As early as 2012, China's manufacturing capacity was already twice that of the United States in purchasing power parity terms, and the combined capacity of the world's eight most advanced industrialized countries. At the same time, China is also one of the world's leading financial capital countries, with a large scale of financial capital.
However, as early as the end of the 90s of the last century, China's manufacturing capacity was already excessive. It's just that these surplus talents have been absorbed by China with continuous large-scale government investment, such as the large-scale development of the western region, the revitalization of the central region, the revitalization of the old northeast industrial zone, the construction of new rural areas, etc., and the construction of large-scale high-speed road networks, high-speed rail networks and other infrastructure construction investments. But when these infrastructures tend to be perfected, this
Some excess capacity and huge financial capital must open up new space and go overseas. To this end, China has done several major things in a row, such as launching the Belt and Road Initiative, integrating resources, industries and finance through investment and construction in countries along the Belt and Road. In addition, after the financial tsunami in the United States in 2008, China accelerated negotiations on the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Economic Zone and reached a Sino-Japanese currency swap agreement. At the same time, economic and trade cooperation between ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea is also actively advancing.
China, Japan and South Korea account for more than 20% of the world's GDP and more than 70% of Asia. Once the three-country free trade area is completed, its scope will inevitably include the entire Northeast Asian region including China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, which means that a third largest economy with a scale of more than 20 trillion US dollars will be born. Then, the three free trade areas will be quickly integrated with the Southeast Asian free trade area to form the East Asian free trade area, which will produce the world's largest economy with a scale of more than 30 trillion US dollars, surpassing the European Union and North America. After that, the economy will snowball westward into South Asia, India, and West Asia, and north into Central Asia, eventually forming an Asian free trade area of more than $50 trillion, larger than the European Union and North America combined.
Such a super-large free trade zone is bound to have super-large-scale intra-regional trade. And will this intraregional trade still be settled in US dollars? Just look at Europe, no, it will definitely be settled in local currency. At this time, China can take advantage of its huge economic volume and promote the internationalization of the renminbi, so that the renminbi will become the dominant currency in Asia, and eventually become the world's hard currency, dividing the world together with the dollar and the euro.
So the problem is, you know, China and Japan are the top two holders of US government bonds, and the three countries of China, Japan and South Korea and many Asian countries and regions also hold a large amount of US debt. If the above description becomes a fact, once this free trade area is formed and settled in local currency, it is bound to greatly reduce the holding of the US dollar, thus seriously impacting the interests of the United States. Since the abolition of the Bretton Woods system, the United States has begun to arbitrarily increase the money supply and use cyclical interest rate hikes and interest rate cuts to harvest the world. These operations of China are the dual export of industrial capital and financial capital, which is equivalent to cutting off the financial route of the United States. In the words of ordinary people, cutting off people's wealth is like killing parents, and the United States is certainly not happy.
There is already an European Union, and the United States will not allow another Asian alliance to appear. Therefore, the United States announced its return to the Asia-Pacific region with a high profile, despite the fact that it has not completely recovered from the difficulties caused by the financial tsunami. Then a series of strange things began to happen: on September 10, 2012, Japanese Finance Minister Tadahiro Matsushita, who strongly promoted the "China-Japan Currency Swap Agreement", suddenly "hanged himself" at home. Six days later, Shin'ichi Nishinomiya, Japan's new ambassador to China, who worked with Matsushita Tadahiro to promote the Sino-Japanese agreement, suddenly collapsed unconscious near his home and died, the cause of which is unknown. Almost at the same time, the Diaoyu Islands were suddenly "nationalized" by Japan, and Sino-Japanese relations turned downward. The THAAD anti-missile system entered South Korea, and Sino-South Korean relations turned cold. The Philippines has come up with a moth for arbitration in the South China Sea, and the situation on islands and reefs in the South China Sea, which has already stabilized, has deteriorated again... This series of operations has dismantled the China-Japan-Korea Free Trade Area, added unstable factors to ASEAN-China cooperation, and disrupted the situation in East and Southeast Asia.
At the end of 2020, RCEP was officially signed, and by February this year, the agreement entered into force in all member countries. The United States feels that the Chinese financial capital that was originally suppressed has the possibility of "rekindling" within this organization. So they began to increase their efforts to play the Taiwan card, and isolated China by dumping the new crown epidemic on China, and even wanted to rob China with this.
Therefore, the real reason for the Sino-US confrontation is that the United States wants to maintain the advantage of its financial capital in the global harvesting interests, and at the same time return the manufacturing industry; China, on the other hand, needs to maintain the outward expansion of its emerging financial capital and maintain its dominant position in manufacturing. In the past, the two had strengths and weaknesses and could complement each other strategically, but now they have to compete at all levels, and they are bound to collide head-on. Although China tries to avoid it from the perspective of national competition
It has also repeatedly shown weakness to the United States, repeatedly stating that it has no intention of challenging its dominance in the world. However, capital does not consider the stability of international relations, because it pursues liquidity and value added, and it tries in every possible way to kill whoever prevents it from earning money and who grabs money from it. The United States is now implementing a full-dimensional and all-round strategic blockade of China, and even does not hesitate to use the extreme method of war to block China's development and maintain its hegemony.
Putting aside those vulgar ideologies, the current struggle between China and the United States has nothing to do with so-called universal values such as social systems, authoritarian dictatorships, liberal democracy, etc., and those things are just Cold War rhetoric of the United States and Spain to show that they stand on the so-called moral high ground. Capital is capital, and its nature is greed and fascism.
In general, the struggle between China and the United States is not only an economic battle, but also a geopolitical game. The interests of the two countries are intertwined, but they are also accompanied by competition and contradictions. This moment requires both sides to think calmly and find a common solution to ensure peace and prosperity in the world. Failure to do so would not only damage both countries themselves, but could also have far-reaching implications for the global economy and geopolitical landscape.
At this challenging time, the international community needs more cooperation and dialogue, not hostility and confrontation. Only by working together can lasting peace, prosperity and stability be achieved for the benefit of all the world's people. This is our shared responsibility and mission.
Finally, we should bear in mind the lessons of history and learn from experience in order to better understand and respond to future challenges. Only by remaining wise and resilient can we find the right path to shared prosperity and peace in this uncertain world.
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