Straight News: The US Secretary of State has flown from Shanghai to Beijing in the afternoon, what are your observations and prospects for Blinken's second trip to China?
Guan Yao, Special Commentator: From this afternoon to tomorrow, the world's biggest focus will undoubtedly be in Beijing. During the US Secretary of State's visit to Beijing, which Chinese officials will meet with, how China and the United States will communicate, and how they will express their respective concerns and priorities, because the assessment of the current situation and the judgment of the direction of the world's most important relationship will become the common concern of the media and public opinion, and it can also be said that it is a matter of common global interests.
The headline of today's Reuters cable from Shanghai says that Blinken is visiting China at a time when US-China relations are improving but important differences remain. The Associated Press sent a telegram from Shanghai on the same day, calling Blinken's visit a "key China visit" and a key visit to China, emphasizing that the new US foreign aid bill is once again pushing Sino-US bilateral tensions. Therefore, today's New York Times report focuses on this detail, and even before Blinken's plane landed in Shanghai, the challenges of his visit were already apparent, and the US Senate had just passed a bill. Now that we know that Biden has signed the bill, the American newspaper acknowledges that Blinken's visit will try to preserve the fragile stability that has recently been achieved in the U.S.-China relationship at a time when tensions over trade, territorial disputes, and national security threaten to disrupt both countries once again.
If the United States really wants to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait, it should immediately stop interfering in China's internal affairs and immediately stop arming Taiwan; the Chinese People's Liberation Army shoulders the sacred mission of defending national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and is committed to all "Taiwan independence" We will never let separatist activities and external connivance and support go unchecked, and we will never be merciful. When Wang Yi met Blinken in Washington in October last year, he warned him in person that the biggest risk to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait is "Taiwan independence", and the biggest challenge to China-US relations is also "Taiwan independence".
Straight News: Blinken posted a short video on social media about the Bund, saying that he came to China to seek progress on the agenda that Americans value most, what does it mean?
Guan Yao: Blinken's short video recorded on the Bund clearly mentions the control of fentanyl chemicals and their precursors, saying that their abuse has become the number one killer of young and middle-aged people in the United States, and that the assistant secretary of state for international anti-drug cooperation will also be accompanying him on his visit to China.
Blinken said in a short video that he will discuss with China bilateral actions and progress in implementing the consensus of the heads of state, but it will also touch on areas where the two countries have important differences. Judging from Blinken's frequent statements before his visit to China and the recent intensive building of public opinion in the United States and the West, the number one "important disagreement" identified by the US side is China's stance on the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the China-Russia economic and trade relations that the US has forcibly associated with it. As I have previously analyzed in my commentary, this is a simple and crude American-style hegemonic logic: equating the normal economic and trade relations between China and Russia with the so-called China's military aid to Russia, with supporting Russia's war machine, and the camp confrontation mentality of black and white, friend and foe.
As for the Wall Street Journal's hype of the so-called "financial sanctions" theory and its threat to expel the Chinese-funded banks that provide Sino-Russian trade settlements from the US-led international financial settlement system SWIFT, this is a smokescreen released by the US media in cooperation with the government, which is intended to preempt public opinion and exert pressure, and there is no realistic possibility. Given the size of the world's two largest economies and the size of their financial industries, the impact of the US unilaterally provoking similar bullying actions can be called a "financial nuclear bomb", and the backlash and consequences are even more unbearable for the US side.
In response to the so-called revelations of the Wall Street Journal, the US "Business Insider" website warned that the US plan to use the hegemony of the US dollar to pressure Chinese banks is likely to set itself on fire and become a landmark event for the outside world to accelerate the process of de-dollarization. A year ago, when Brazilian President Lula visited the headquarters of the New Development Bank of the BRICS countries in Shanghai, he asked with his soul: Why the US dollar? Why not use the renminbi or other currencies for settlement? If the expulsion from the settlement system is a so-called "financial nuclear bomb," then CNBC TV in the United States has long called China's holding of huge US Treasury bonds a "financial nuclear bomb," and the SWIFT settlement system has long been under pressure and full of holes.
Straight news: Biden officially signed the foreign aid bill and forcibly imposed a ban on TikTok, TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi responded, TikTok American companies will not go anywhere, so can TikTok fight to change its life?
Special Commentator Guan Yao: Zhou Shouzi's latest response is a 2-minute speech video posted by the official TikTok account, emphasizing that "the facts and the constitution are on our side and will fight for the rights of American users in court." We aren't going anywhere, we won't go anywhere, Zhou Shouzi's statement in the video has become the headline quote of many media reports in the United States and the West, and it is also the determination of TikTok under the pressure of show: fight the lawsuit to the end and fight to the end with the law as a weapon.
It must be emphasized again that TikTok is not just fighting itself, because the foreign aid bill signed by Biden is not only aimed at TikTok, but also stipulates that other apps that meet the so-called red line and come from "adversary countries" identified by the United States will also be subject to similar restrictions. The so-called adversaries of the United States include China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran. Therefore, whether TikTok can go through the road of court rights protection and disobedience is of great significance.
TikTok has at least several advantages in defending rights and disobedience in lawsuits:
First of all, of course, its huge user base, up to 170 million American users, is TikTok's biggest lever to leverage American public opinion to win public sympathy and support, not to mention a series of amazing figures created by TikTok in the American ecosystem: contributing $8.5 billion in GDP, $2 billion in taxes, 59,000 jobs, etc.
Second, in terms of litigation strategy, TikTok insists that the bill is equivalent to a ban and will take the U.S. government to court for violating the freedom of speech of 170 million users. In the U.S. judicial context, as long as the issue of freedom of speech under the Constitution is involved, the bill will be heavily scrutinized.
Third, the stripping period is extended to 270 days, and the president has a 90-day discretion, which would make the bill likely to span an election year, even without considering the course of the "marathon" lawsuit. Who will be president after the election is of course the biggest uncertainty. Trump has previously posted an accusation on social media that "the liar Biden is responsible for the ban on TikTok." He pushed for TikTok to shut down so that his friends on Facebook would become richer, more dominant, and able to continue fighting the Republican Party. It's called election interference!"
Needless to say, TikTok's road to legal disobedience in the United States is bound to be extremely dangerous, extremely difficult, and facing a series of unpredictable factors. Judging from the latest insider information revealed by the US media, the legislative ban on TikTok constitutes the so-called Thunder Run, that is, "Operation Thunder": it took only 7 weeks from the release of the bill to the signing and implementation. The New York Times investigation found that core departments, including the National Security Council and the Department of Justice, were deeply involved, and the American newspaper even named Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco to participate in the entire legislative process. Therefore, this also indicates that in the name of law and national security, forcibly robbing TikTok's business in the United States is, to a certain extent, a systematic behavior of the U.S. legislative and executive system, and TikTok is fighting against the entire power system, which naturally makes people sweat.
Author丨Guan Yao, special commentator of Shenzhen Satellite TV's "Live Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan".
Editor丨Guo Jinchi, Editor-in-Chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News
Typesetting丨Zheng Zhijia, direct news editor