Chinazism

President Trump's China criticism turns harsh at U.N., says won't take 'bad deal'
By Jeff Mason and David Lawder

U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, New York, U.S.

UNITED NATIONS -- U.S. President Donald Trump delivered a stinging rebuke to China's trade practices on Tuesday at the United Nations General Assembly, saying he would not accept a "bad deal" in U.S.-China trade negotiations.
Four days after deputy U.S. and Chinese negotiators held inconclusive talks in Washington, Trump's remarks were anything but conciliatory and emphasized the need to correct structural economic abuses at the heart of the countries' nearly 15-month trade war.
He said Beijing had failed to keep promises it made when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and was engaging in predatory practices that had cost millions of jobs in the United States and other countries.
"Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms, it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers, heavy state subsidies, currency manipulation, product dumping, forced technology transfers and the theft of intellectual property and also trade secrets on a grand scale," President Trump said.

"As far as America is concerned, those days are over."
Although President Trump held out hope that the United States and China could still reach a trade deal, he made clear he wanted a deal that would rebalance the relationship between the two economic superpowers.

"The American people are absolutely committed to restoring balance in our relationship with China. Hopefully, we can reach an agreement that will be beneficial for both countries," President Trump said. 

"As I have made very clear, I will not accept a bad deal."

President Trump also recently said he was not interested in a "partial deal" to ease tensions with China, saying that he would hold out for a "complete deal."
U.S. stocks gave up modest gains and fell into negative territory after President Trump's U.N. address. 

President Trump's speech highlighted the plight of U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology, which has become a symbol of U.S. assertions that China fails to protect American intellectual property and steals it or forces the transfer of it. 

Two years ago Micron accused a Chinese state firm of stealing its chip designs.

"Soon, the Chinese company obtains patents for nearly an identical product, and Micron was banned from selling its own goods in China," Trump said, "But we are seeking justice."
He added that the United States lost 60,000 factories and 4.2 million manufacturing jobs since China joined the World Trade Organization.
"The rhetoric around China and President Trump's speech was as harsh as we have heard," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at brokerage National Securities Corp in New York.
The tone of President Trump's speech was at odds with some recent steps by China to meet his request for purchases of more American farm products. 

On Monday, Chinese importers bought about 10 shiploads of U.S. soybeans -- about 600,000 tonnes.
China's customs commission will exclude certain amounts of U.S. soybeans, pork and other products from its retaliatory tariffs, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.
The purchases were made following last week's trade talks, which both the U.S. and Chinese sides characterized as "productive." 

People familiar with the trade talks said no new Chinese proposals were presented, and the countries agreed to continue minister-level talks in early October.
In his U.N. speech, President Trump also drew a link between resolving the U.S.-China trade dispute and Beijing's treatment of Hong Kong. 

Washington was "carefully monitoring the situation in Hong Kong," he said.

"The world fully expects that the Chinese government will honor its binding treaty made with the British and registered with the United Nations, in which China commits to protect Hong Kong’s freedom, legal system and democratic ways of life," President Trump said. 

Hong Kong was a British colony until 1997.

"How China chooses to handle the situation will say a great deal about its role in the world in the future. We are all counting on Xi as a great leader," Trump added.
President Trump also touched on trade with Japan in his speech, saying that he and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday would "continue our progress in finalizing a terrific new trade deal."
It remains unclear whether the two countries will sign the deal at their bilateral meeting or whether Japanese requests for assurances that Trump won't hit them with autos tariffs will delay the final agreement.

War is Beautiful

US Designates China as Currency ManipulatorBy Reuters
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin answers reporters after the G-7 Finance, July 18, 2019 in Chantilly, north of Paris, France.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. government has determined that China is manipulating its currency, and will engage with the International Monetary Fund to eliminate unfair competition from Beijing, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement on Monday.
China let the yuan weaken past the key 7-per-dollar level on Monday for the first time in more than a decade and later said it would stop buying U.S. agricultural products, inflaming a worsening trade war with the United States.
The sharp 1.4% drop in the yuan comes days after U.S. President Donald Trump stunned financial markets by vowing to impose 10% tariffs on the remaining $300 billion of Chinese imports from Sept. 1, abruptly breaking a brief ceasefire.

The last time the United States named China a currency manipulator was in 1994. 

The U.S. Treasury had designated Taiwan and South Korea as currency manipulators in 1988, the year that Congress enacted the currency review law. 

China was the last country to get the designation, in 1994.
The dollar fell to a two-week low against the euro after the Treasury statement.

Mortal Threat

China Can Beat the U.S. Without a Fight
By COURTNEY KUBE

HONOLULU — While much of the world is focused on the ballistic missile and nuclear threat from North Korea, the U.S. military in the Pacific region is also concentrating on a more lethal foe: China.
"PRC is the most pressing threat in the Pacific," one U.S. military official in the region said, using the acronym for the People's Republic of China. 

While North Korea is a near-term issue, "it's a fight we could win," the official said — but he worries about a fight with China.
Among the U.S. concerns: China's controversial island-building, theft of technology, currency manipulation, cyberattacks, and both military and non-military aggression.
The U.S. military officials in the region warn that China's ultimate goal is to become dominant by slowly making changes to the international order. 

China will use the laws it likes, ignore the ones it doesn't and eventually other nations will have to adapt, thereby re-setting the rules in China's favor.
"China is on a path to win without a fight," one official said.
The Chinese have changed the rules, for example, with their new man-made islands. 

In recent years China has transformed reefs, rocks and sandbars in the South China Sea into forward-based military installations, sparking a territorial dispute and diplomatic conflict. 

The islands are hundreds of miles from the Chinese mainland in international waters.
The Chinese have declared an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) around the islands. 

If the Chinese enforce the zone and the international community begins to adhere to it, the islands will become accepted as Chinese territory. 

"We ignore the problem too long and we can't tackle it anymore," said an official.

“China is on a path to win without a fight.”
One of the largest islands is Fiery Cross, complete with three expansive airfields, hangars for multiple fighter squadrons and several gun emplacements. 

While the Chinese military has not staged any aircraft or weapons there, the infrastructure is ready.
Man-made islands like Fiery Cross and Woody Island offer the Chinese a platform close enough to attack all U.S. operational bases in the region, as well as a number of close allies, the officials explained.
China "holds at risk a lot of operational bases," one of the officials said, which erodes the U.S. military advantage in the region.
Chinese dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Fiery Cross Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in this still image from video taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United States Navy on May 21, 2015. 

Another of China's strategies is to use its military forces without actually employing any hostile action, a strategy known as hybrid warfare. 

For example, civilian fishing boats are being assigned to serve under military commanders. 

The Chinese Navy uses them to harass or hit other nation's vessels who may not realize they are dealing with another nation's military.
The Chinese have also expanded their fleet of long-range aviation assets, like the H6K bomber, in an attempt to project more power and influence in the region, the officials said. 

They frequently fly these bombers over international waters within 1,000 miles of Guam, putting the U.S. territory in range of their air-launch cruise missiles. 

"They are practicing attacks on Guam," one official said, calling the exercises "messaging" to the U.S.
Like the threat from North Korea, part of the concern from China lies in the potential for miscalculation or even misunderstanding. 

Last year Japanese military aircraft flew roughly 900 sorties in response to Chinese aircraft in the region. 

Scrambling jets every single day puts a strain on a close U.S. ally and raises tensions. 

"It's a potential flashpoint," a U.S. military official in the region said, warning that these interactions "could bubble into conflict."
Two U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth jet fighters fly near Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in this handout photo dated August 4, 2010. 

The U.S. military already has a number of forward deployed bases in the region, but in the case of conflict with China, the officials said, the U.S. would quickly establish about a dozen small, temporary Contingency Operating Bases (COBs) in remote locations. 

These outposts would be located further from the conflict to keep some assets out of range of enemy attacks. 

The military would rapidly prepare the sites to defend U.S. assets against hundreds of incoming rounds, using systems like THAAD and Patriot batteries.
The U.S. military recently practiced for this situation, rapidly deploying Air Force F-22s from a base in Alaska and setting them up at a location in the region. 

The exercise addressed the logistical issues of moving quickly to a potentially harsh new environment.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford returned from a six-day trip to the Pacific late Monday night. 

He agreed that while North Korea is the immediate threat to the U.S., China is the enduring threat.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, speaks to reporters about the Niger operation during a briefing at the Pentagon on Oct. 23, 2017. 

"China's path of capability development," said Dunford, "and their efforts I think to address our power projection capability, our ability to deploy when and where necessary to advance our interests, is very much the long-term challenge in the region."
The official said the U.S. military spends a lot of time making sure they don't forget about the long-term existential problem.
"We are ready" for North Korea, the official said. But the peer-level fight with China "is the real challenge."

Amateurish Clown

Trump faces Chinese mockery following embarrassing reversals
By Steve Benen

Donald Trump has spent years complaining about China and its currency manipulation. 

As a candidate, the Republican not only blasted Obama on the issue, he publicly vowed to label China a currency manipulator literally on his first day in office.
That didn’t happen, of course, though as recently as last week, the president continued to posture, calling China the “world champion” of currency manipulation. 

This week, however, Trump dramatically changed direction, declaring that China isn’t actually manipulating its currency at all.
The reversal hasn’t gone unnoticed in Beijing, where the American president is now the subject of mockery.
Te-Ping Chen, a Beijing-based reporter for the Wall Street Journal, notes that Chinese media are gleefully mocking Trump for doing such an abrupt 180 on an issue that was one of the staples of his 2016 presidential campaign – in fact, Trump had originally vowed to officially label China a currency manipulator on the first day of his presidency.
“Eating his words!” reads one headline, as translated by Chen.
“Trump slaps self in face, again,” reads another.
Note, in China, the media is controlled by the state, so this ridicule is an extension of the government’s own messaging.
Of particular interest in these headlines was the use of the word “again” – because while Trump has only been in office for a few months, this wasn’t the first time he’s embarrassed himself with China.
As we discussed in February, soon after winning the presidential election, Trump spoke directly with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, which not only stunned international observers, but also undermined the “One-China” policy, uprooting decades of carefully crafted, delicate diplomacy that had been honored by both parties.
When many speculated that the Republican bumbled into this by accident, the White House quickly pushed back, insisting that Trump – who likes to present himself as master negotiator and strategic genius – was executing a brilliant plan, keeping China on its toes.
“I fully understand the One-China policy,” Trump said on Dec. 11. 

“But I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things.”
Two weeks into his presidency, in a rather pathetic display of groveling, Trump reversed course, declaring his support the “One-China” policy – publicly and in writing – in exchange for nothing.
The New York Times reported soon after that the rookie president managed to avert a more serious confrontation with Beijing, but Trump also made a lasting impression on China that despite all of his posturing, the American president will back down when push comes to shove.
“Trump lost his first fight with Xi and he will be looked at as a paper tiger,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University of China, in Beijing, and an adviser to China’s State Council. 

“This will be interpreted in China as a great success, achieved by Xi’s approach of dealing with him.”
Trump’s reversal on Taiwan is likely to reinforce the views of those in China who see him as merely the latest American president to come into office talking tough on China, only to bend eventually to economic reality and adopt more cooperative policies.

That could mean more difficult negotiations with Beijing on trade, North Korea and other issues. […]
American leadership was damaged by Trump staking out a position and then stepping back, said Hugh White, a professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University.
White told the Times in February that the Chinese will now see Trump as “weak” as a result of his handling of the dispute.
The American president reinforced that impression this week, posturing for years about taking on Chine’s alleged currency manipulation, only to fold like a cheap suit when it mattered.
Whether Trump understands this or not, the world notices developments like these. 

Three months into his presidency, Trump is signaling to everyone that he’s a president who prefers acting tough to being tough.

Talkative President

Schumer: Trump 'all talk and no action' on China
By Ted Barrett

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer held a conference call with reporters Tuesday to blast Donald Trump's handling of trade issues with China -- including what he called China's unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft and more.
"China has taken us to the cleaner when it comes to the economy. China has stolen millions of jobs and trillions of dollars," Schumer said, noting that he had agreed with much of Trump's rhetoric about getting tough on China during the campaign. 

"By any measure, the Chinese government has pulled the rug out from the United States and administrations from both parties haven't been strong enough to fight back."
But Schumer said since Trump took office he has been "all talk and no action" on China.
"He had a golden opportunity to win concessions from Xi Jinping when he visited last week. But unfortunately, Trump has come home empty handed. The two countries have said they will work on a 100-day plan to bring better balance to the trade relationship. That means virtually nothing," Schumer said.
He was asked about Trump's tweet Tuesday linking possible trade deals to China's handling of the nuclear threat from North Korea.
"The Chinese have done nothing on North Korea and I don't they will unless they think America is tough," Schumer said. 

"The tougher we are on trade, the more likely the Chinese are going to do something on North Korea."
"I think what he (Trump) is saying is if they are tough on North Korea, I'll go easier on trade. First, ask the American people if they like that deal, and they won't," said Schumer who indicated he told the President that before Trump met with Xi. 

"I told him the tougher you are on one, the more likely you'll get on the other. I won't tell you what he said, but not much."
On Syria, Schumer said the strike to retaliate for Syria's use of chemical weapons was appropriate but that if Trump wants to do more he needs to devise a strategy and present it to Congress. 

He said Democrats are very concerned about getting into a land war in Syria.
"Any further action he should come to Congress. There should be a defined strategy. I, for one, am really, really wary and worried about getting committed to another land war and making the same mistakes we did in Iraq," Schumer said explaining that his caucus would be "very dubious" of that happening.

China, the Party-Corporate Complex

The Chinese Communist Party has systematically infiltrated China’s expanding private sector and now operates inside more than half of all nonstate firms; it can manipulate or even control these companies, and some foreign ones, too. 

By Yi-Zheng Lian 

A salt farm in Shouguang, China. Despite the dismantling of the more than 2,000-year-old state monopoly on salt, all Chinese salt producers are still state-owned. 

There, they said it: China is not a market economy.
In December, 15 years after China’s accession to the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the United States and Japan formally refused to grant Beijing the coveted label, denying it important concessions on tariffs and other trade restrictions.
This is partly a response to economic distortions caused by government intervention, including an excess supply of steel, which China exports and dumps in advanced industrialized countries, harming local producers and workers. 

China’s many high-profile moves to open up its markets in recent years turn out to have been half-hearted, if not intentional hoodwinking.
Despite the much-ballyhooed dismantling of the more than 2,000-year-old state monopoly on salt, all salt producers are still state-owned. 

Foreign asset-management companies are now allowed to operate wholly foreign-owned businesses in China, but only in deals with institutional investors and private-equity funds, not retail investors, a much bigger piece of meat. 

Partly to steady the renminbi, Beijing no longer allows Chinese citizens to take up to $50,000 a year out of the country, and it has recently restricted the repatriation of capital by foreign firms like Deutsche Bank.
Hyper control, interventionism, currency manipulation — no, China is not a market economy. 

But it’s worse than that: The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.) has systematically infiltrated China’s expanding private sector and now operates inside more than half of all nonstate firms; it can manipulate or even control these companies, especially bigger ones, and some foreign ones, too. 

The modern Chinese economy is a party-corporate conglomerate.

It all began in 1927. 

After the communists’ fledging armed forces suffered serious losses against the Kuomintang government, Mao Zedong and his associates decided to create a hierarchy within the military that would mirror the structure of the party. 

The idea was to instill a fighting spirit throughout the ranks by ensuring the party’s top commands would be relayed all the way down. 

Party branches 黨委 were set up at the company level, party cells 黨小組 at the platoon and squad levels, and together they recruited foot soldiers who were solid party material. 

In just a few years, an unruly peasant army was whipped into a formidable fighting force. 

The rest is history.

Fast-forward to 2002 and the C.C.P.’s 16th national congress, convened under Jiang Zemin. 

In the interval, China underwent two revolutions. 

The first, in 1949, established a communist state; the second, in 1978, jettisoned a stagnant socialist planned economy in favor of pro-market reforms. 

By 2002, China was competing with France to be the world’s fifth-largest economy, and the Chinese people’s entrepreneurial spirit had been reawakened. 

Much of the political elite, including relatives of party and government officials, had become the owners and managers of private businesses.
To legitimize the growing importance of these so-called new social strata 新興社會階層, the party congress inducted many of their influential members into the C.C.P. 

The move would have been heresy under canonical Marxism, but it was made acceptable by the convenient adoption of a new ideology: socialism with Chinese characteristics. 

It was also an astute bargain. 

In return for becoming politically acceptable, capitalists and top business managers at private firms would come under the party’s chain of command.
The year before the party started controlling the managerial classes, it had already begun to manipulate how private companies ran their businesses. 

Starting in 2001, every private-sector firm with at least three C.C.P. members among its employees was required to have a party unit. 

Much like the party cells in the Red Army decades earlier, party units in companies were expected to “firmly implement the Party’s line, principles and policies,” as the Constitution of the C.C.P. stipulates.
This control mechanism had been a fixture of state-owned enterprises since the first days of the communist republic. 

It was brought into the private sector in earnest in 2001 — just on the heels of China’s accession to the W.T.O. — and extended after the 2002 party congress. 

Around 2006, it was introduced to private firms set up with foreign capital, like Walmart.
Official figures for 2015 show that nearly 52 percent of all nonstate firms had party cells in-house. 

Such cells are now also common in foreign companies, and even foreign NGOs, at least among bigger, more established ones.
This should greatly worry foreign businesses and foreign governments because the Constitution of the C.C.P. requires all members to “adhere to the principle that the interests of the Party and the people stand above everything else, subordinating their personal interests to the interests of the Party and the people.” 

Or, as the head of the Chinese Supreme Court put it last year, when those sets of interests conflict, the “party nature” of C.C.P. members should always trump their human nature 黨性高於人性.
Consider the implications. 

For example: 

A foreign firm employs a Chinese senior manager, giving him access to its proprietary technology; he is also a member of the C.C.P. and the firm’s party unit. 

One day his party superior orders him to transfer a trade secret from the firm to a local rival. 

In the name of party and country, he can only comply.
In other words, the problem isn’t just that the Chinese economy isn’t a market economy in that the government won’t let it operate freely enough. 

Its very structure, including in the private sector, has been designed — and is redesigned, again and again — to serve the C.C.P.’s will and its interests, economic and political. 

This party-corporate complex is only going to expand as most state-owned enterprises, inefficient holdovers from the old economy, are being supplanted by the fast-growing private sector.
Chongcao 蟲草, literally worm-grass, is an expensive Chinese herbal medicine said to treat lung and kidney conditions, and erectile dysfunction. 

It comes from a curious creature. 

At the beginning of winter the larvae of a certain moth are attacked and impregnated by a kind of micro-fungus. 

Come summer, they still look like animal larvae, but have become plant colonies. 

In the last 15 years or so, the C.C.P. has colonized China’s private-sector companies in much the same way: They may still seem like conventional firms, but really they are the party’s potent spawn.

Western civilization vs. Chinese barbarity

President Trump stresses his desire for warmer ties with Russia, while steadily bashing China

By Nicole Gaouette

A battle between Chinese despotism and the forces of Western civilization

Washington -- President Donald Trump has been playing global favorites on Twitter.
He has showered praise on Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling him "very smart!," and dismissed charges that Moscow tried to hack the election process -- even as he's bashed China for currency manipulation, skewing trade and failing to rein in North Korea.
It's unusual enough for a president to try to sway foreign policy before he's in office, let alone in 140-character bursts. 

While Trump aides have said some of his statements shouldn't be taken "literally," the tweets offer insight to his foreign policy views and raise a question: When both China and Russia are challenging US power globally, why does he favor Moscow and not Beijing?
Trump's positions on Russia and China mark a sharp turn from current policies -- and that might to the point. 

Trump and much of the Republican establishment have made clear they aim to dismantle Barack Obama's "legacy". 

Trump is also looking to use international relations in pursuit of economic ends.
Some analysts point to the possibility that Trump is taking a deeply strategic approach; others say he simply fails to understand the crucial importance of long-standing US alliances. 

At the least, it is an approach that contrasts with dovish Obama, who has tried to find areas of common interest with China and to isolate Russia for a series of international violations.

Russia has conducted a stealth invasion of Ukraine, annexed Crimea and is believed to have supplied the missile that brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, shot down over Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country's civil war, including in the bombing of civilians in Aleppo.

The Russian military has buzzed US aircraft and ships. 

And the US intelligence community found with "high confidence" that Russia was behind hacking during the presidential election campaign meant to sow doubts about American democracy.
And yet Trump speaks warmly of Putin and his desire for better cooperation with Russia, publicly dismissing the hacking allegations and accusing the intelligence community of acting politically.

Russian officials have said they were in contact with the Trump campaign throughout the election.

Matt Rojansky, head of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, said one reason could be Trump's belief that the US should do more work with Russia to defeat terrorism and his view of that challenge as a "civilizational battle between radical Islam and, broadly speaking, the forces of Western civilization."
Trump and his aides, particularly his national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, are much more comfortable including Russia under the Western civilization umbrella than Republicans such as Arizona Sen. John McCain and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Rojansky said. 

That will cause friction, possibly sooner rather than later.

If Trump's stance on Russia might fray some of his alliances in Congress, he's already put European allies on edge with his warmth toward Putin and questions about the worth of NATO. 

He's also unnerved Asian allies by questioning the cost of helping Japan and South Korea defend themselves.

Some analysts have suggested Trump is practicing a sophisticated version of the "triangular diplomacy" former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Richard Nixon used to play the Soviet Union and China off against each other in the 1970s.
But the two nations are no longer bitter enemies and instead have a well-defined, if mutually wary, relationship.
China has targeted the US with cyberattacks. 

Beijing has pushed US companies in China to give up proprietary technology, it has contested US claims to freedom of navigation through Asian waters, its military has buzzed US naval vessels and Air Force jets, and it recently stole a US underwater drone.

If Trump seems to look the other way on Russian transgressions, China gets no free pass.
The President often charges that Beijing steals American jobs with unfair trade practices. 

"China has been taking out massive amounts of money and wealth from the U.S. in totally one-sided trade, but won't help with North Korea. Nice!" he tweeted Monday. 

Soon after winning the presidency, he antagonized Beijing by holding a phone conversation with Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen.
Trump has long made China a bogeyman, accusing it in a 2012 tweet of having created the concept of global warming in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive. 

He has particularly fixated on China's economic practices, blasting it on trade and currency throughout the presidential race and blaming it for the loss of American jobs. 

Trade and job losses were central rallying cries of his campaign.

TRUMP’S SHOWDOWN WITH CHINA

China is already trying to test Trump, but is it Trump who will test China?
By Daniel Greenfield

China has hacked some of our most vital defense secrets. 

Its secret police operate in our cities. 

Its propaganda outlets threaten war while it plots to build an empire at our expense.
And our government appeases the thugs and tyrants of the People’s Republic of China.
The viral photo of Obama bowing to China’s Hu Jintao is how most Americans remember the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit. 

But behind the ‘bow seen around the world’ were months of appeasement.
While it’s fashionable in the media to mock Trump’s threat to label China a currency manipulator, Obama had accused China of currency manipulation when he first ran for the White House.
“I will use all diplomatic means at my disposal,” he had vowed. 

Like the rest of his diplomatic threats, this too swiftly devolved into a silly farce.
Obama tried to bluff China by dragging out the verdict on whether it was a currency manipulator. 

To no one’s surprise, the People’s Republic didn’t blink, the People’s Republic of Hope and Change did.
China suspended a number of contacts and sharpened its rhetoric. 

As winter gave way to spring, Obama dispatched emissaries pleading with China to come back. 

The bow was only his final humiliation.

By the next election, Romney, like Trump, had pledged to label China a currency manipulation on his first day in office. 

At the debate, Obama ducked the issue, blurted out mean-spirited smears at Romney and then insisted that “currencies are at their most advantageous point for U.S. exporters since 1993.”
In 1994, the US had last labeled China as a currency manipulator. 

This year China had nearly slid off the watch list entirely.
Despite his claims of diplomatic acumen, Obama had a special gift for mixing threats and appeasement papered over with doubletalk in a way that humiliated him and the entire country. 

But our foreign policy toward China had rested for a long time on a nervous fear of doing anything to offend it.
Trump put aside fear of offending China by making it clear that the One China policy would be conditional on concessions from the Communist regime on trade and North Korea.
The panicked reaction to this statement and his chat with the President of Taiwan is typical of the establishment’s nervous take on China. 

It’s why Obama had made the Dalai Lama leave the White House through the back door past a pile of trash. (China was still offended.)
Our foreign policy toward China is one of fear. 

We save face with empty bluffs, like Obama’s currency report delay or the innocent passage in the South China Sea, that don’t fool the PRC in the least. 

The Communist regime learned long ago that we were too afraid of a trade or military war to stand up to it.
Trump’s phone call occasioned more outrage from our own media than the sock puppets of the PRC. For the first time in generations there is an American president who won’t follow the same predictable patterns as Obama’s bow or Bush’s apology after the Hainan Island Incident when PRC thugs captured one of our planes, took its crew prisoner, interrogated them and seized classified information.
China has become very used to bluffing us with aggressive gestures that are in their own way just as hollow as our own. 

It’s being cautious because its leadership is unsure about trying to bluff Trump.
But there is a showdown coming.
Treason and complacency allowed the Communists to take over China. 

Truman had insisted on appeasing the Communists and forcing our allies to do the same thing. 

Today the United States continues to appease China while warning allies in Taiwan, Japan and South Korea not to defy it.
While we slept, China leveraged its vast industrial growth to build an empire that not only threatens Asia, but stretches into Africa and the Middle East. 

Its artificial islands are an example of how the regime meshes its impressive productivity and strategic goals. 

The one thing everyone across the political spectrum can agree on is that China thinks bigger than we do. 

They disagree on what to do about it.
China envy has been the left’s dirty little secret. 

Obama once told the media that it would be easier to be the president of China. 

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood insisted, "The Chinese are more successful because in their country, only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do, 3 million.” 

What didn’t China have? 

“50 to 60 Republicans” in Congress obstructing the agenda.

If it wasn’t for democracy, China is a bubble. 

Its power depends on maintaining artificial and unsustainable growth backed by the illusion of its inevitability. 

Trump represents a serious threat to both its growth and its inevitability.
Because of the bubble, a threat to that sense of inevitability may be the most threatening.
Despite the historical ironies, China is more nationalist than Communist. 

And like other non-Western nationalists, it made out like a bandit as the West descended deeper into globalism. 

China, like Turkey, Iran, Russia and the Sunni Muslims, wants to recapture a lost greatness at America’s expense.
China’s usual strategy with globalists was to threaten what they valued most: international relations. Globalists are obsessed with maintaining international linkages. 

Nationalists aren’t. 

The PRC’s usual weapon, the one that it used to cow Obama whose worst threat was being “isolated”, may now be useless. 

Worse still, Trump may be willing to use that very same weapon against China.
Trump has asserted before that other countries need us more than we need them. 

That’s the kind of talk that makes China very nervous. 

The PRC has no choice but to test Trump, but it’s doing so very carefully.
It showed some muscle with a nuclear bomber flight in the South China Sea to send a message to Trump while remaining safely on Obama’s watch. 

Its propagandistic bellowing about war in Taiwan is framed by expectations that Trump will back off once he sees how determined the PRC is to get its way.
Considering Trump’s election theme, it’s not surprising that his first international crisis is with China. While Democrats have rediscovered the Russian threat, after mocking Romney for it, Russia lacks the vigor to do more than inflict malicious damage on America and Europe while swallowing a few of its neighbors. 

China has the scope and energy for far more ambitious plans for Asia and the world.
Despite our focus on the Middle East, our ugliest losses in both economy and war have come out of Asia. 

Previous presidents have postponed an inevitable showdown by hoping that outsourcing much of our industry to China would make conflict less likely. 

This typically globalist thinking also typically achieved the opposite result, just as it is doing with Iran, by turning a deadly enemy into an even deadlier enemy.
This is not a mistake that Trump is likely to make. 

Previous administrations saw our trade with China as the solution. Trump sees it as a bigger threat than China’s military. 

In the eyes of some, his greatest heresy is his view of economic competition as a zero-sum game. That is also the Chinese view of it.
Trump needs to extract a mixture of economic and strategic concessions from China. And China seeks the same thing from America. 

Two visions of national greatness are on a collision course.
China may blink because it is not a democracy. 

Its leaders know that Trump will not be here after two terms while their system will move forward. But the instability of the bubble may limit the blink. 

Too much of China’s greatness is an illusion. 

And Trump threatens to shatter that illusion.
What China will do depends not on how strong it is, but on how weak and fragile it really is.
It has been a long time since any American president has dared to test China. 

Instead China has been doing all the testing. 

Now China is already trying to test Trump, but is it Trump who will test China.

Two Chinas Policy

Trump hints US could end 'One China' policy
By MARK LANDLER

President Donald J. Trump before a rally last week in Cincinnati. 

WASHINGTON — President Donald J. Trump, defending his recent phone call with Taiwan’s president, asserted in an interview broadcast Sunday that the United States was not bound by the One China policy, the 44-year diplomatic understanding that underpins America’s relationship with its biggest rival.
Mr. Trump, speaking on Fox News, said he understood the principle of a single China that includes Taiwan, but declared, “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.”
“I mean, look,” he continued, “we’re being hurt very badly by China with devaluation; with taxing us heavy at the borders when we don’t tax them; with building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea, which they shouldn’t be doing; and frankly, with not helping us at all with North Korea.”
Mr. Trump is not the first incoming Republican president to question the One China policy, but his suggestion that it could be used as a chip to correct Chinese behavior sets him apart.
Mr. Trump has been praised by some Republicans for taking a new look at China policy.
Not since 1972, when Richard M. Nixon and Mao Zedong enshrined the One China principle in the Shanghai Communiqué, has an American president so publicly and explicitly questioned the agreement, which resulted in the United States’ ending its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in 1979.
The Chinese government issued no immediate response to Mr. Trump’s remarks.
But the comments are likely to reignite a debate that erupted nine days ago when he took a congratulatory phone call from President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan.
At first, Mr. Trump played down the implications of the call, saying he was just being polite.
Later, his aides said he was well aware of the diplomatic repercussions of speaking to Taiwan’s leader.
Lobbyists for Taiwan, including the law firm of former Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, spent months laying the groundwork for the call.
On Friday, China’s senior foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, met with Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, whom Mr. Trump has designated as his national security adviser, according to a person told about the meeting.
It was not clear what the two men had discussed.
Some Republican foreign policy experts — including John R. Bolton, who is believed to be a front-runner for the post of deputy secretary of state — have praised Mr. Trump for shaking up a decades-old diplomatic agreement.
As a candidate, Ronald Reagan criticized the decision to abrogate recognition of Taiwan; after his election, he invited a delegation from Taiwan to attend his inauguration, antagonizing Beijing.

President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan speaking on the phone with Mr. Trump this month at her office in Taipei, Taiwan.

In 1982, as president, Mr. Reagan pushed for the so-called Six Assurances, the fifth of which was a statement that the United States would not formally recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.
Still, he abided by the terms of the Shanghai Communiqué.
Mr. Trump did not appear worried about inflaming Beijing.
He repeated in the Fox News interview many of the criticisms he has made about China, particularly on trade and currency manipulation.
He also emphasized what he said was China’s unwillingness to help curb the nuclear ambitions of its neighbor North Korea — an issue that foreign policy experts believe could confront Mr. Trump as the first geopolitical crisis of his presidency.
The president said he would not tolerate having the Chinese government dictate whether he could take a call from the president of Taiwan. 
He reiterated that he had not placed the call, and described it as “a very short call saying, ‘Congratulations, sir, on the victory.’”
“Why should some other nation be able to say I can’t take a call?” Mr. Trump asked.
“I think it actually would’ve been very disrespectful, to be honest with you, not taking it.”
The Chinese government, which once viewed Mr. Trump favorably as an alternative to the hawkish Hillary Clinton, has struggled to respond to Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach.
China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, initially played down the significance of the phone call, calling it a “petty action by the Taiwan side” that he said would not upset the longstanding policy of One China.
But as Mr. Trump has repeated his campaign criticisms of China — and as his statements about Taiwan have rippled throughout the region — Beijing has noticeably hardened its tone.
It warned him last week, in a front-page editorial in the overseas edition of People’s Daily, that “creating troubles for the China-U.S. relationship is creating troubles for the U.S. itself.”

How a Trump or Clinton presidency could hurt China's economy

By Holly Ellyatt

Whether Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or her Republican rival, Donald Trump, wins the U.S. election next month, the next inhabitant of the White House's approach to China is likely to take a more realistic view towards the world's second largest economy, analysts believe.
"Relative to Barack Obama, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have a more practical view on a wide range of China issues," analysts Kevin Lai and Olivia Xia from Daiwa Capital Markets said in a note Thursday.
"Clinton is considered a China hawk, especially on a range of issues outside of trade," the analysts noted. 

"On U.S.-China trade, she is also more confrontational than Obama but comparatively more moderate than Trump."
With just over a month to go till American voters go to the polls, the race to the White House is too close to call.
Trump has a large and loyal following and his populist views have chimed among disaffected U.S. voters but he is seen as a renegade. 

Clinton, meanwhile, has suffered from a lack of personal popularity although she is seen as far more experienced and as having "sounder" government policies.

Daiwa's analysts said that either way, the U.S. government's attitude towards China was going to change.
"The U.S. government under Obama and Bush has tried to make things work with China… (but) we believe debate over currency manipulation, loss of American jobs, intellectual property rights theft and an uneven playing field will continue to attract intense discussion inside and outside Washington. Whoever wins the election will come under greater pressure to address these issues more convincingly."

But Daiwa's analysts said that whoever becomes president, the U.S.' attitude towards superpower China -- arguably its biggest economic and political rival – is likely to change, especially if import tariffs are raised. 

They warned that this could be to China's economic detriment, potentially causing a decline in the country's gross domestic product of up to 1.75 percent.
"Even if Clinton wins, we do not think it will be just another status-quo extension (of the current trade policy towards China). From a scale of 1 to 10, Obama being 1 and Trump 10, we would rate Clinton, and her views on U.S.-China trade policy as a 4."
Trump has pledged to impose a 45 percent tariff on imports from China if he wins the election, a move that Daiwa said would be "profound," although the analysts noted that even Clinton was likely to be tough when it comes to trade issues with China.
"The impact of a 45 percent tariff, as suggested by Trump, would be profound. China would likely retaliate by levying similar tariffs on the U.S. But U.S. exports to China are about a quarter of the size of China's exports to the U.S., while the U.S. economy is almost twice as large as China's. The damage on the U.S. would be far less," they noted, adding that Clinton was unlikely to pursue such a policy.
"We cannot rule out the possibility of similar countervailing measures under a Clinton presidency. But a 30-45 percent tariff is highly unlikely and a watered-down version would be more realistic, in our view, if Clinton toughens her stance on China."
Daiwa noted that even if import tariffs were raised to 15 percent from the current rate of 4.2 percent, the impact on China's economy "would be significant."
"We expect exports from China to the U.S. to decline by 31 percent (and) China's gross domestic product (GDP) could see an initial 0.95 percent decline and a 1.75 percent loss over time," Lai and Xia noted.