The world has changed dramatically, and we as Chinese are very fortunate to live in an era of national rejuvenation. The 21st century is destined to belong to China and the century to all mankind. In this century, the world has entered an era of great change, and the balance of power between the countries of the East and the West has undergone a qualitative change, and in this process of evolution, China, as the only independent variable in the world, is playing an increasingly important and even decisive role.
As the defenders of the original world pattern and order, Western countries, including the United States, have also realized the changes of the times, especially some of the traditional European powers, the most obvious and representative of which are Germany and France.
At the same time, Russia, China's all-weather strategic partner, has also joined in the vast changes. This kind of change is not only a change in a certain organization, system, and agreement, but also a change of mind. Gone are the days when the West dominated the world, or even the United States, over the world.
As we all know, the so-called victorious power of World War II, the only superpower in the world now, the United States led the establishment of the post-World War II international order, which actually has two sides. On the positive side, in an anarchic international community, if there is no credible and coercive State or inter-State organization to coordinate, it is easy to re-emerge the chaos caused by order and even break out into world wars again. At this level, the United States has indeed played an important and positive role.
However, there are certain problems in the United States itself, the United States has a Cold War mentality and a zero-sum game mentality, which is related to the historical practice of the formation of more than 200 domestic and foreign wars initiated by it in history, and also has a relationship with the practice of tribal and tribal life before the founding of the United States.
Under the guidance of this ideology, the United States has done everything possible to plunder international resources and harm the national interests of other countries by means that cannot be obtained from the table, just like a vampire, not only brutal but also greedy. With the blessing of the capitalist system, the United States has brought this strategic aggression to the extreme.
Specifically, U.S. hegemonism consists of four pillars: dollar hegemony, U.S. military, technology and education, and U.S. cultural soft power, which are interrelated and influence each other, and together support the world's only superpower.
Among them, the most important is the hegemony of the us dollar. Unlike the previous direct external colonization, the strategic plunder of the United States was not only achieved by war, but also relied on the global financial order and international trading system with the US dollar as the core. The United States has fully achieved the goal of making money lying down.
However, everyone is not a fool, the United States has been doing this for a long time, the original foreign policy based on the strong national strength of the United States has been differentiated, so that many countries dare to be angry and dare not speak, especially the United States military bases all over the world and the strict alliance system, but also play a full set of vertical and horizontal. Everyone is entangled in various interests, they are not clear and inseparable from each other, and their own strength is limited, and they cannot form a challenge and impact on the hegemony of the United States, so they can only swallow their anger.
However, time has entered the 21st century, the international situation has changed, especially in the past 10 years, the rapid rise of emerging countries represented by China and Russia has obtained a large number of international resources, and these countries have made more and more contributions in the process of global development.
With contributions, there is a voice, and everyone has expressed their dissatisfaction with the current international order and the need for the current institutional reform, which is being amplified step by step, and the reason for this amplification is that the United States' own strength has declined, its control has declined, and the alliance system has gradually begun to disintegrate, at the same time, some groups of countries are trying to find ways and means to solve the hegemony of the dollar.
Surprisingly, dozens of countries around the world have officially started the process of de-dollarization, and there are even some american traditions, including the European Union, that have not been seen. As a partner of China, Russia will naturally not be willing to fall behind, with its important voice and influence in the field of energy, Russia's de-dollarization process is accelerating.
As Kissinger said at the third Bund Finance Summit:
No country in the world, including the United States, can achieve hegemony anymore.
The words of the 98-year-old Kissinger directly pointed out the theme of the times and the trend of future development. So why can't any country achieve hegemony? What are the inevitability and concrete ways of the de-dollarization process? How can China protect its interests in the midst of great changes?
In the 20th century, and even earlier in the 18th and 19th centuries, it seemed that only foreign aggression and the use of a large amount of manpower and material resources to ensure the stability of the colonies were the only way for the country to develop and grow. This method was widely used by the world powers of the time, including Britain, France, Italy and other countries.
After World War I, the GDP of the United States actually exceeded that of the United Kingdom, but the international community did not recognize the United States, and its influence was still limited. This, combined with the blessing of the Thucydides Trap, forced the United States to come up with a new way to replace Britain's position as the world leader.
After the end of World War II, the United States made a fortune by virtue of the war, so it relied on its economic advantages to take the lead in establishing the Bretton Woods system. When the United States was founded, it had already established an international image of "debt must be repaid", but even so, the dollar is still relatively weak, because the replacement of international currencies requires a long process.
As a result, the United States forcibly linked the dollar to the hard currency of gold. Later, many countries exchanged the excess dollars in their hands with the US government for gold, which really made the United States suffer a big loss. Seeing that this system could not be sustained, the United States began to link the dollar with the strategic resource of oil, thus completely stabilizing the position of dollar hegemony.
The most important reason why the United States attaches so much importance to the international status of the us dollar is that the United States wants to achieve the goal of aggression through a new model, that is, economic hegemony. As long as the US dollar becomes the settlement currency of international trade transactions, as well as the national foreign exchange reserve currency and the main common currency, a new era of aggression can be ushered in.
In this mode of aggression of the United States, the most important link is international trade, with international trade there is a circulation of money, the United States can carry out the next step of operation, so since the 50s of the last century, the United States has strongly advocated globalization, but this globalization is economic globalization, relatively speaking, it is still relatively single.
However, today, the trend of globalization has become clearer and clearer, because countries have solidified their special status in the international industrial chain, and they are hit by the epidemic and urgently need to restore their economies and strengthen cooperation, so economic globalization has slowly begun to move towards comprehensive globalization.
What we are talking about here is comprehensive globalization, including political mutual trust, economic cooperation, military transparency, science, technology, education, and people-to-people exchanges. This kind of globalization not only stems from the needs of countries' own national interests, but also from the impact of international issues, including global climate change, epidemic prevention and control, combating terrorist organizations, etc., some global issues are becoming more and more difficult, and countries must cooperate with each other to achieve reconciliation.
In this case, the hegemony of the United States began to waver. On the one hand, the HEGEMONy of the United States is based on a small circle, but the small circle does not solve the problem, the G7 gradually withdraws from the international stage, and the G20 gradually forms a leading role in global problems, which is an important symbol.
On the other hand, economic cooperation, industrial cooperation has been unable to meet the needs of various countries, the United States set of superficially fair, but in fact hegemonic sanctions have been unacceptable to everyone, and now the United States, whether it is economically sanctioning a certain country, or blocking a certain country in science and technology will affect the stability of the supply chain, thus triggering a butterfly effect, which will have a negative impact on other countries and even the United States itself.
Therefore, we say that in the future, the complete end of US hegemony will definitely rely on globalization, as long as the process of globalization is not interrupted, the HEGEMONy of the United States will certainly be completely disintegrated, and win-win cooperation is the trend of the times, and no one can stop it.
As we mentioned above, the United States relies on dollar hegemony to carry out strategic plunder, which is embodied in the following aspects:
First, with the liquidity of the dollar, the United States can pass on domestic inflation risks. We all know that as long as the Economy has problems in the United States, the first way to think of it is to print money, but we have never heard of a situation where the united states is hyperinflation caused by a large flood of dollars, and finally the collapse of the American economy.
This is because the US dollar circulates globally, according to statistics, for every 1 US dollar issued by the US government, 60% of them will flow to the international market, and less than 40% remain in the United States. Therefore, as long as the dollar remains liquid, the United States can pass on domestic inflationary pressures to other countries through international trade. This is actually a kind of plundering of resources, plundering the blood and sweat of the working people of other countries.
Second, with the ease of operation of the dollar, the United States can reduce the cost of US debt at will. As we all know, the United States also has an important economic stimulus, that is, to issue US Treasury bonds, relying on the national credit of the United States, to let other countries lend money to the United States to spend.
However, after all, the borrowed money is to be repaid with principal and interest, and the United States used to rely on the high-tech industry to obtain value and use it to repay, but now the American technology companies have also been impacted, and their own strength has declined across the board. The United States has one thing in mind, that is, to manipulate the dollar exchange rate.
Through interest rate hikes, interest rate cuts, etc., not only can the dollar itself appreciate and depreciate, but also at any time to make the dollar assets in the hands of other countries, including US bonds, shrink instantaneously, so that on the surface, the total amount of money repaid by the United States has not changed, but the actual value has long since shrunk. This method is actually equivalent to snatching money directly from others.
Finally, with the international nature of the dollar, the United States can sanction other countries at any time. The dollar is not only a currency, represents an international financial system, but also a weapon, which is absolutely strategic and whose influence is by no means limited to the economic sphere.
Many countries have their own investments in the United States, and the U.S. government can freeze these assets if it is not happy, and these countries have no way at all. What is even more frightening is that the trading system of international trade, swift, is under the control of the United States, and if any country opposes the United States, the United States will remove its name from the system, and the country will have no way to trade internationally in an instant. This is tantamount to directly depriving the state of the way to obtain benefits, without the exchange of goods between countries, many problems in the fields of society and people's livelihood will break out one after another.
In this way, reform of the international financial system is imminent. As a result, dozens of countries around the world have begun the process of de-dollarization. French President Emmanuel Macron said at an EU summit some time ago:
The EU should further promote the internationalization of the euro and get rid of the "long-arm jurisdiction" of the US dollar.
This sends a clear signal.
And our old friend, Russia, has long since embarked on a process of de-dollarization. This time, with the successful implementation of the Benxi-2 project, both Russia and the EUROPEAN Union have an extra weight in their hands. The reason is simple, the EU has decided to bypass the dollar and use the euro when settling on energy in the future. This is destined to be good news for Russia, and it is also good news for promoting the full use of the euro.
For China, our economic aggregate is placed here, our scale and market are placed here, and from the perspective of market economy, we must diversify our currency reserves to minimize the risks that accompany the process of international trade.
To take a very simple example, if China trades with countries that use dollar settlement, it must exchange its currency for dollars before starting, and after making profits, it will also exchange dollars for its own currency, and there will inevitably be a time difference in this process, which will create opportunities for the fluctuation of the dollar exchange rate. If the dollar depreciates before and after the exchange business, it will inevitably lead to a decrease in the real value of our profits.
China's de-dollarization process is relatively moderate, which is determined by our industrialization, marketization, and modernization. China is actually very remarkable, more than 200 countries and regions in the world, only 20 countries have achieved modernization or mastered the method of modernization.
Since modern China, the greatest achievement has been the realization of industrialization. With industrialization, we have the foundation of everything, and we can create more value on this basis, firmly grasping the driving force of national development in our own hands.
With the foundation of industrialization, China's position in the global industrial chain can be continuously improved, as long as we are willing, we can rely on scientific and technological innovation to upgrade the level of products and technologies, thereby creating higher value. In this process, the areas and countries involved in China's trade are bound to be complex and changeable.
Therefore, when we trade, we must use diversified currencies, and when we trade with the United States and countries that use the existing international trading system, we must use the US dollar, and when we trade with countries that have signed local currency swap agreements, including France, Iran, And Russia, we may have to use other specific currencies. Therefore, the process of China's de-dollarization is relatively slow, which is not a bad thing, and it is an important symbol of a country's comprehensive national strength and stability.
In short, because the process of globalization continues to advance, no country can form hegemony, and even the United States, which now has hegemonic capabilities, is bound to lose to the development trend of this era. The dollar itself has serious problems, and the global financial system seems to be calm, but in fact it has long been undercurrents. De-dollarization is a relatively slow but firm process, as long as countries strengthen cooperation and enhance the awareness and level of mutual trust, they will certainly be able to create a more fair and reasonable international order, and can also find a way to reform the global monetary system that meets the needs of all countries.