Sanctions against China will cost the United States a lot of money
As everyone knows, in order to engage in extensive great power competition with China, the US House of Representatives has set up a special department, the full name of which is the US-China Special Committee on Strategic Competition, which is usually directly called the "China Committee" by the outside world. Recently, the committee produced an ingenious report with dozens of recommendations for improvements aimed at "improving the competitiveness of the U.S. economy." According to the Financial Times, this is the result of a stress test of the financial system conducted in advance by the United States for fear of a conflict with China. However, the results of the test have made the US side frustrated and disappointed, and it can only issue a series of "patch measures" to make up for possible loopholes.
According to a report by the Financial Times on December 13, the House of Representatives China Committee has conducted two high-profile "war games" in the past year. One of the exercises was to bring in Wall Street executives. Because the China Committee wants to figure out how the United States can ensure that it does not cause "serious harm" to its own economy while making China pay a heavy diplomatic and economic price if a military conflict breaks out between China and the United States over a crisis in the Taiwan Strait or other circumstances.
Although the idea is beautiful, the reality is very "slap in the face". In a recent report, Emily Kilkress, a sanctions expert at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a bipartisan think tank, said that China's sheer economic size and close interconnectedness mean that any economic sanctions imposed on China will rebound violently around the world and cause serious harm through China's deep economic ties with almost all countries, including the United States.
In other words, even if a military conflict breaks out between China and the United States, the United States must reduce the scope and scale of the battle as much as possible, and try to avoid it if it does not involve the economic field. If the United States completely severes economic relations with Japan, as it did with Japan during World War II, not only will it not be of any substantial help to military operations, but will instead result in an embarrassing situation in which it will injure 1,000 enemies and 1,200 itself.
The United States has done everything possible to contain it, and China has continued to rise and progress
Despite the gloomy outcome, the House China Committee intends to take action.
First, the U.S. plans to set up a so-called "coordination office" to assess the impact of China's military and economic counterattacks on the economic, financial, and supply chains of the U.S. and its allies.
Second, the China Commission recommended that the U.S. Department of Commerce develop a rule that would limit U.S. technology from providing advanced cloud computing clusters beyond a certain threshold to foreign adversaries. In order to prevent China from gaining access to more advanced semiconductor and artificial intelligence technologies, including China.
With regard to this move by the United States, we can draw conclusions from three aspects.
First, the fundamental task of the so-called "China Committee" of the US House of Representatives is not to enhance US competitiveness, but to find ways to blockade and contain China. In essence, the various small moves of the United States at present constantly show that what it is best at now is still the Cold War period, and the set of strategies and tactics used to deal with the former Soviet Union has no new ideas and rigid thinking; this outdated strategic thinking and hegemonist concept is doomed to the United States to be unable to keep up with the progress of the times, and it is only a matter of time before it is brutally crushed and eliminated by the wheels of history rolling forward.
Second, speaking from facts, the U.S. technological blockade of China is not completely ineffective, and it has objectively caused certain troubles and obstacles to high-tech enterprises, including China's Huawei company. But it's just a little bit of an obstacle, and it creates more atmosphere and anxiety, and if you want to say that the effect is greater, it's not necessarily. Under the strict lockdown, China's semiconductor technology is still improving, and the new generation of domestic chips is more mature and reliable, and has begun to penetrate from the military field to the commercial market.
In fact, it is not the United States that is decoupling from China, but the fact that Chinese manufacturing is becoming more powerful and gradually replacing the status of imported goods and technology. However, American politicians simply do not see this, and they still think that without American technology, Chinese companies will not be able to move forward.
Third, while China continues to rise, its rivals are struggling, so we can't be too optimistic yet. We must try our best to continue to maintain the momentum of development and breakthrough, continue to expand and upgrade the industrial chain and trade chain, continue to strengthen ourselves, and constantly strengthen economic and trade ties with other countries, so that China has more and more friends, so that the space for opponents becomes smaller and smaller, and in this process of eliminating the other, quietly gain the advantage of the game. By the time the Americans react and see the situation clearly, China may have left them far behind.