On November 26, 2018, Andre Vltchek writes on Dissident:
This article was first published on International Daily News in China.
Most of those who have had a chance to witness Chinese internationalist mega-projects, clearly understand that the West is near to collapsing; it will never be able to compete with tremendous enthusiasm and progressive spirit of the most populous country on earth, which on top of it, is built on socialist principles (with Chinese characteristics).
Writing this essay in rural Laos, I just saw literally an entire army of Chinese engineers and workers in action, building huge bridges and tunnels, connecting one of the poorest countries in Asia, to both China and Southeast Asia, erecting hospitals and schools, small factories for the rural population, airports and hydro-electric power plants or in brief: putting the great majority of Laotian people out of poverty by providing them with both livelihood and infrastructure.
China does precisely this all over the world, from the tiny South Pacific island nations to African countries, plundered for centuries by Western colonialism and imperialism. It helps Latin American nations that are in need, and while it does all that, it is also quickly growing into a middle class, ecologically and culturally responsible nation; a nation which is likely to eradicate all extreme misery very soon, most likely by the year 2020.
The West is horrified!
This could easily be the end of its global order, and it could all actually happen much earlier than expected.
And so, it antagonizes, provokes China, in all imaginable ways possible, from the US military buildup in Asia Pacific, to encouraging several Southeast Asian countries plus Japan to politically and even militarily irritate the PRC. Anti-Chinese propaganda in the West and its client states has lately been reaching a cacophonic crescendo. China is attacked, as I recently described in my essays, from literally all sides; attacked for being ‘too Communist’, or ‘for not being Communist enough’.
The West, it seems, despises all the economic practices of China, be it central planning, ‘capitalist means for socialist ends’, or the unwavering desire of the new Chinese leadership to improve the standard of living of its people, instead of enriching multi-national corporations at the expense of the common citizens of the PRC.
It looks like a trade war, but it actually is not: like the ‘West versus Russia’, the ‘West versus China’ is an ideological war.
China, together with Russia, is effectively de-colonizing part of the world which used to be at the mercy and disposal of the West and its companies (as well as the companies of such client-states of the West as Japan and South Korea).
However it is being labelled, de-colonization is clearly taking place, as many poor and previously vulnerable countries worldwide are now seeking protection from Beijing and Moscow.
But to ‘add insult to injury’, parallel to de-colonialization, there is also ‘de-dollarization’, that is inspiring more and more nations, particularly those that are victims of Western embargos, and the unjust, often murderous sanctions. Venezuela is the latest such example.
The most reliable and stable ‘alternative’ currency that is being adopted by dozens of countries, for international transactions, is the Chinese Yuan (RMB).
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The prosperity of the entire world, or call it ‘global prosperity’, is clearly not what the West desires. As far as Washington and London are concerned, the ‘surrounding’, peripheric world is there predominantly to supply raw materials (like Indonesia), cheap labor (like Mexico), and guarantee that there is an obedient, indoctrinated population which sees absolutely nothing wrong with the present arrangement of the world.
In his recent essay for the Canadian magazine Global Research titled “IMF – WB – WTO – Scaremongering Threats on De-Globalization and Tariffs – The Return to Sovereign Nations” a distinct Swiss economist and a colleague of mine, Peter Koenig, who used to work for the World Bank, wrote:
“As key representatives of the three chief villains of international finance and trade, the IMF, World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) met on the lush resort island of Bali, Indonesia, they warned the world of dire consequences in terms of reduced international investments and decline of economic growth as a result of the ever-widening trade wars initiated and instigated by the Trump Administration. They criticized protectionism that might draw countries into decline of prosperity. The IMF cuts its global economic growth forecast for the current year and for 2019.
“This is pure scaremongering based on nothing. In fact, economic growth of the past that claimed of having emanated from increased trade and investments has served a small minority and driven a widening wedge between rich and poor of both developing and industrialized countries. It’s interesting, how nobody ever talks about the internal distribution of GDP growth…”
Peter Koenig further argues that globalization and ‘free trade’ are far from desirable for the majority of the countries on our planet. He is giving an example of China:
“Time and again it has been proven that countries that need and want to recover from economic fallouts do best by concentrating on and promoting their own internal socioeconomic capacities, with as little as possible outside interference. One of the most prominent cases in point is China. After China emerged on 1 October 1949 from centuries of western colonization and oppression by Chairman Mao’s creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Mao and the Chinese Communist party first had to put a devastated ‘house in order’, a country ruined by disease, lack of education, suffering from hopeless famine as a result of shameless exploitation by western colons. In order to do that China remained practically closed to the outside world until about the mid- 1980’s. Only then, when China had overcome the rampant diseases and famine, built a countrywide education system and became a net exporter of grains and other agricultural products, China, by now totally self-sufficient, gradually opened its borders for international investments and trade. And look where China is today. Only 30 years later, China has not only become the world’s number one economy, but also a world super power that can no longer be overrun by western imperialism.”
To be self-sufficient may be great for the people of every country on our planet, but it is definitely a ‘crime’ in the eyes of the West.
Now China is not only independent, but it dares to introduce to the entire world a totally new system, in which private companies are subservient to the interests of the state and the people. This is the total opposite to what is happening in the West (and its ‘client states’), where the governments are actually indebted to private companies, and where people exist mainly in order to generate huge corporate profits.
On top of it, China’s population is educated, enthusiastic, patriotic and incredibly productive.
As a result, China competes with the West, and it is easily winning the competition. It does it without plundering the world, without overthrowing foreign governments, and starving people.
This is seen by the United States as ‘unfair competition’. And it is being punished by sanctions, threats and provocations. Call it a ‘trade war’, but it actually isn’t.
And why unfair competition? Because China is refusing to ‘join’ and to play by the old imperialist rules dictated by the West, and also readily accepted by countries such as Japan and South Korea. China does not want to rule. And that scares the West.
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In a way, both President Trump and the present leadership of China want to make their countries ‘great again’. However, both countries see greatness differently.
For the United States, to be ‘great’ is to control the world, once again, as it did right after WWII.
For China, to be great is to provide a high quality of living for its citizens, and for the citizens of most of the world. It also means, to have great culture, which China used to have for millennia, before the ‘era of humiliation’, and which was rebuilt and greatly improved from the 1949, onward.
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A leading US philosopher, John Cobb Jr., in a book which we are writing together, recently pointed out:
“Ever since World War II, what the United States has done has been widely copied. Hence this country has had a great opportunity to lead the world. For the most part, it has led in the wrong direction. The United States and the whole world, including China, are paying, and will continue to pay, a high price. But the days of American leadership are ending. I would still like for the U.S. to engage in major reforms, but it is too late for these to change the world. We can rejoice that the American century is giving way to the Chinese century.”
Many do, but some don’t. The end of the American leadership, or call it the “American Century”, may scare people in various Western countries, particularly in Europe. Rightly so! Those days of unopposed Western economic dictatorship are over. Soon, perhaps, Europeans will have to really compete, and work hard for their money, instead of living high life relying on plunder of natural resources and cheap labor in their semi or neo-colonies.
While many in the West are scared, the situation is simultaneously rising hopes in all other parts of the world.
For China, not to yield to the US pressure, is to show that it is serious when it comes to its independence. The most populous nation on earth is ready to defend its interests, its people and its values.
It is far from being alone. From Russia to Iran, from Venezuela to South Africa, new and newer nations are going to stand by China, and by doing so, they will be defending their own independence and freedom.
US Trade War with China: Desperate Move to Save Western Empire
Gary Reber Comments:
Yes, independence should be the aim as far as is possible, not trashing our manufactory prowess by outsourcing supply chains and finished goods and products and off-shoring our productive capabilities by investing in countries with low labor costs and other low cost of production, instead of investing and build a future economy in our homeland that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen.
The quote from Peter Koenig is telling. Koenig states that “economic growth of the past that claimed of having emanated from increased trade and investments has served a small minority and driven a widening wedge between rich and poor of both developing and industrialized countries. It’s interesting, how nobody ever talks about the internal distribution of GDP growth…”—the ownership distribution of corporations’ productive capital assets in which the owners of multi-national corporations are being enriched at the expense of ordinary citizens.
Another article, published on November 27, 2018 in the Los Angeles Times, stated that “very few companies can absorb what would amount to a 25% tax on goods, and American businesses have warned that such an increase in tariffs would sharply raise costs for consumers and could lead to significant disruption in their operations.” [and profits]
Yes, that would be an impact on those businesses who have become dependent on “Made In China” supply chains and finished goods manufactured by Chinese companies in Communist China or moved their production to company-owned facilities (off-shoring), and who export those goods and products back to the United Sates tariff-free (as in “free trade”). Of course, this applies equally to outsourcing/off-shoring and dependency on other low-wage, non-regulated countries such as Communist Vietnam, etc., whose exported goods and products exported back to the United Sates are presently not subject to tariffs.
The reality is if we continue to outsource and rely on “Made In China” and “Made In ______ for finished goods and as parts supply chains, the United States will fall as a production economy, which will increase significantly the number of Americans in poverty, as good-paying manufacturing jobs will no longer exist. This will be the fate of any “developed” economy who is putting reliance on Communist China, etc. to source their supply chains and finished goods.
If we do nothing and continue to accept the “free trade/non-tariff” status quo, Communist China will become far more stronger economically, as a result of our investment in Communist China and consumer adoption of Chinese-made partial or finished goods and products. As a result, Communist China will come to dominate the world as an economic engine of production and supply chains for what’ is left of so-called “manufacturers” at home and in other “developed” countries who are “assemblers” of parts made in Communist China.
Tariffs are essentially taxes paid on foreign-made supply chain and finished goods exported to the United States to even their “cost to build” factor with our homeland “cost to build” factor (fair trade). The reality is Americans are paid more as workers and our environmental and worker safety and conditions regulations add to the cost of production. Thus, our own “Made In The USA” supply chain and finished goods will carry a higher price tag than those supply chain and finished goods made in low-wage, non-regulated countries such as Communist China and Communist Vietnam, etc. in which there are State-owned or partially-owned enterprises with Chinese control and subsidized enterprises, and in which there is no social security, health care or workers’ compensation requirements.
At present there are literally thousands of corporations in the United States, plus North America and Europe, that have opted to outsource their supply chains and off-shore part or all of their manufacturing to foreign countries with lower standards of living by either setting of their own facilities or acquiring existing enterprises to establish operations and contract services there, under Chinese control. Our presence in Communist China and increasingly in Communist Vietnam and other low-wage, lower-living-standard countries has enabled those countries people to learn and re-learn how to interact and meet the needs of foreign corporations and clients and manage projects and quality control, upgrade language skills, meet quality product global standards and establish global brands of their own.
Another aspect is Communist China requires foreign corporations who want to enter certain industries—such as energy, telecommunications and autos—to form joint ventures with local partners, which means Chinese controlling ownership. Often, this results in the transfer of technology to the Chinese companies. An interesting fact is 90 percent of all privately owned firms in China employ fewer than eight people, with major enterprises State owned or co-owned and controlled by Chinese. According to reports, handing over technology has effectively become a cost of doing business in China—a market too big for many American and other North American and European businesses to ignore. Additionally the Chinese government strongly encourages or requires global businesses to carry out R&D activities inside the country. And many corporations are on-shoring to produce for the growing Chinese market. These corporations are frequently owned with Chinese partners. According to reports GM is the leading car-maker in China with about 20 percent of sales and selling more vehicle units than in the U.S. GM has 11 assembly plants and four power-train plants in eight Chinese cities. Similarly, foreign companies have been on-shoring in the United States for years.
When Americans act in the role of consumers instead of producers of goods, products and services, they demand lower and lower prices. (And in the role of producers, they demand higher and higher wages.) By doing so we encourage American corporations to outsource/off-shore. This results in the requirement for every corporation within the same sector to also outsource/off-shore to stay competitive. This is also true in other developed countries. The result is the jobs associated with producing at home are eliminated and shifted to jobs the corporations create in Communist China, etc. Displacing people, often thousands, from their jobs is disastrous to their financial well being and creates hard times for those displaced and their families. And the workers who lose their jobs are often the people who have helped grow the business into what it is, though they are not the owners of the business (which is a serious problem that needs to be addressed).
As the job attrition expands, Americans will have less opportunity to produce and therefore consume. (To consume one must produce and we are doing less and less.) Thus, outsourcing/off-shoring increases unemployment and underemployment, while enriching the owners of the corporations outsourcing/off-shoring as it makes American corporations more competitive in the global marketplace in which other foreign corporations are doing the same thing—outsourcing/off-shoring production to competitively sell their goods and products globally. As a result, Communist China, etc, becomes a stronger economic and political force.
Technology is a huge factor in producing at less cost and technology can be adopted by manufacturers in any country at any stage of their development. Communist China has benefited immensely from learning the technologies of American corporations who have outsourced and building upon them to advance further, as well as from their youth who are being educated in American universities or non-immigrant specialized workers who are living here on H-1B visas. At our stage of development, only through employing the non-human factor—technology—can our corporations produce high quality low priced goods, products and services to be competitive in the global marketplace.
Some argue that past intellectual property (IP) theft and past technology transfer has enabled Communist China to focus and sustained government investment in science and research and develop their own capabilities to innovate and invent with technology advancement.
But in order to have technology there must be “engineers” and other educated knowledgeable people. Communist China is focused on education, particularly engineers trained in computer science and software at universities. In 2006, there were an estimated 290,000 graduates and according to China’s Ministry of Education and National Statistics Bureau that number is expected to increase to 350,000 to 400,000 new engineering graduates available to support its expanding manufactory capabilities. Here in our homeland and Europe, the enterprises outsourcing are struggling to secure educated staff, a deficiency in our educational systems. Many Chinese, from weathly families, pay high tuitions to be educated in America’s top universities, only to return to Communist China to contribute to their economy. Also, along with all this outsourcing and off-shoring investment is the mounting concern of how to protect intellectual property
According to reports, the Communist Chinese government has designated 10 cities as computer software centers, offering incentives to global firms and local enterprises to establish themselves there. The cities provide strategic accessibility to the international business traveler with leading-edge telecom infrastructure, and an educated talent pool, fueled by the presence of Communist China’s top universities, with studies in English, Japanese and Korean. This is part of the long-term master plan to dominate the world with its manufactory capabilities, while at the same time America and Europe are ceding dominance by their enterprises outsourcing and off-shore investing in Communist China, and our failure to produce sufficient numbers of new engineering graduates for sustainability.
In America, while the national focus is always on job creation (yet we displace jobs through outsourcing/off-shoring) instead of ownership creation, our scientists, engineers, and executive managers who are not owners themselves, except for those in the highest employed positions, are encouraged to work to destroy employment by making the capital “worker” owner more productive. How much employment can be destroyed by substituting machines for people is a measure of their success—always focused on producing at the lowest cost. Only the people who already own productive capital are the beneficiaries of their work, as they systematically concentrate more and more capital ownership in their stationary 1 percent ranks. Yet the 1 percent is not the people who do the overwhelming consuming. The result is the consumer populous is not able to get the money to buy the goods, products, and services produced as a result of substituting “machines” for people, as well as outsourcing/off-shoring to reduce the cost of production. And yet you can’t have mass production without mass human consumption made possible by “customers with money.”
We have two choices for our future. Either we cede our manufactory and intellectual property development to Communist China and other low-cost countries and cease to produce goods and products, and eventually services in our homeland with the result of a significant deterioration of middle-class living standards and an increase in poverty—and dependence on Communist China. OR we halt the influx of “cheap” and cheeper supply chain goods and finished products, “Made In China” and elsewhere, by imposing tariffs to incentivize our corporations to discontinue outsourcing/off-shoring and return to investing and building a future economy here that can support general affluence for EVERY citizen.
But for the latter to be successful, there must be a significant reform to our monetary, financial and capital credit systems and our planning for long-term results, with a focus on engineering educations to innovate and invent new technologies. We need tuition-free public colleges and universities to provide higher education opportunities for our children. We can no longer ignore the ever more concentration of ownership of the non-human productive capital means of production—all manner of technology, robotics, AI, automation, etc.—among a tiny wealthy capital (asset) ownership class, who seek to OWN the world.
Primarily, we must provide equal opportunity for EVERY child, woman and man to become an owner of future productive capital asset formations and eliminate barriers to using insured, interest-free capital credit, repayable solely from the earnings of the investments, without the requirement of past savings (which only the already wealthy have). It is this collateralization barrier that excludes the non-haves from access to wealth-creating, income-producing productive capital.
We need to lift ownership-concentrating Federal Reserve System credit barriers and other institutional barriers that have historically separated owners from non-owners and link tax and monetary reforms to the goal of expanded capital ownership. Removing barriers that inhibit or prevent ordinary people from purchasing capital that pays for itself out of its own future earnings is paramount as an actionable policy. This can be done under the existing legal powers of each of the 12 Federal Reserve regional banks, and will not add to the already unsustainable debt of the federal government or raise taxes on ordinary taxpayers. We need to free the system of dependency on Wall Street and the accumulated savings and money power of the rich and super-rich who control Wall Street. The Federal Reserve System has stifled the growth of America’s productive capacity through its monetary policy by monetizing public-sector growth and mounting federal deficits and “Wall Street” bailouts; by favoring speculation over investment; by shortchanging the capital credit needs of entrepreneurs, inventors, farmers, and workers; by increasing the dependency with usurious consumer credit; and by perpetuating unjust capital credit and ownership barriers between rich Americans and those without savings. The Federal Reserve Bank should be used to provide interest-free capital credit (including only transaction and risk premiums) and monetize each capital formation transaction, determined by the same expertise that determines it today—management and banks—that each transaction is viably feasible so that there is virtually no risk in the Federal Reserve. The first layer of risk could be taken by the commercial credit insurers, backed by a new government corporation—the Capital Diffusion Reinsurance Corporation (CDRC)—through which the loans could be guaranteed. The CDRC could reinsure any portion of any financing risk assessed as reasonable and insurable but not already insured by the commercial capital credit insurance underwriters. In establishing the CDRC, the federal government would not be undertaking a new responsibility but merely simplifying and rationalizing an existing one. This entity would fulfill the government’s responsibility for the health and prosperity of the American economy.
These reform policies are what is address in the proposed Capital Homestead Act (aka Economic Democracy Act and Economic Empowerment Act) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-a-plan-for-getting-ownership-income-and-power-to-every-citizen/, http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/capital-homestead-act-summary/ and http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/. And The Capital Homestead Act brochure, pdf print version at http://www.cesj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/C-CHAflyer_1018101.pdf and Capital Homestead Accounts (CHAs) at http://www.cesj.org/learn/capital-homesteading/ch-vehicles/capital-homestead-accounts-chas/
Also support Monetary Justice at http://capitalhomestead.org/page/monetary-justice and the all-encompassing agenda of the JUST Third WAY (not “Third Way”) Movement (also known as “Economic Personalism”) at http://foreconomicjustice.org/?p=5797, http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-basic-principles-of-economic-and-social-justice-by-norman-g-kurland/ and http://www.cesj.org/resources/articles-index/the-just-third-way-a-new-vision-for-providing-hope-justice-and-economic-empowerment/.
