US warships are being sent regularly through the South China Sea to challenge Chinese maritime claims, and warplanes did recent overflights over the area. Defense Secretary Mark Esper is faulting China for its “provocations.”
The US ships are deliberately being provocative, but the US objection is that China reacted by expelling the USS Barry from the area near the Paracel Islands. The islands are claimed by China, but the US backs a contrary claim by Vietnam.
Amid all of this, China’s top intelligence ministry has issued a report to President Xi warning that the risk of a direct war with the US is at its highest level since the Tiananmen Square massacre. This is being driven by mounting anti-Chinese sentiment, related to the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump Administration officials have been driving this anti-Chinese sentiment, implying that China mishandled the coronavirus, or may have been directly to blame for it. While the US is largely doing this for the sake of internal political battles, Chinese officials clearly fear it could spill over into international conflict.
The risk of international conflict continues to grow. Neither side wants it, but both sides are trapped in a struggle that ultimately leaves them little alternative.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/
peter, just say no to the GHOULS of both countries. The real enemy of the USA citizen are the POS GHOULS in DC,,purge them all! Then purge those greedy corporate heads that sent all our manufacturing to China and elsewhere so they could become billionaires$,,like $millions wasn’t enough!! 🙁 🙁
You have a real valid point here, Jay. It’s time to say no to the Ghouls of both nations .. The real enemy of the US citizen are the Pos Ghouls in DC ..Purge them all! Then purge those greedy corporate CEO’s that sent all our manufacturing to China and elsewhere so they could become billionaires – like millions wasn’t enough. Seize all of their ill-begotten assets will do the trick.
Actually, the low-paying factory jobs offshored to China were replaced by well paying tech and administrative jobs, plus, even small U.S. companies could source from China before the trade war..
It would have been far better for the U.S., though, if the offshoring titans had repatriated their profits to America.
The decoupling of the U.S. from China happened just when China was becoming obsolete as the centre of global supply chains.
Brock,,I must disagree, you seem to have bought into the off-shoring myth pushed by the piggy corporations and bought off Ghouls. 🙁
“Understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship”
https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/OE%20US%20Jobs%20and%20China%20Trade%20Report.pdf
Check out page 9; the GDP chart U.S. was a major gainer in China trade, Australia, NZ and Singapore benefiting far more for having raw materials and/or proximity to China, finally followed by Europe.
An older generation of manufacturing jobs were replaced with modern manufacturing and even more service industry jobs.
However, the service industry is far more diverse than just the myth of just being waitressing and Walmart.
https://simplicable.com/new/service-industry
In effect, the U.S. skipped the messy transition to information-based production by sending those then-new processes to China, where the tech matured until it could be ‘reshored’, free from messy labour disputes.
As learned from the Vietnam War, opposing the well-being of the American worker too openly was problematic.
Apart from China, places like Ireland prospered, counting the beans of offshoring safe from U.S. taxes and rising wages.
The piggy corporation ghouls continued to rob the middle class, of course. However, those workers that adapted to the new information economy prospered for that fleecing.
If Trump is doing something wrong, its not only that that his trade war won’t bring back jobs offshored to China – they are obsolete. However, the U.S. jobs that developed and prospered on the China trade are being tossed as well.
COVID-19 neatly masks that, China just got fired. All Americans dancing to that tune just got their chairs yoinked when the music of raining money stopped, and there’s no plan on deck except to blame China for getting fired.
What really happened, was that China stood up and just got kneecapped. The U.S. economy is collateral damage.
AT, I stand on my statement. 🙂
Fine, but you present no evidence to back that statement.
Brock, I have managed a wide ranging Tech. Corp for 37 years and I have seen first hand what has transpired in that time, 47 years in total industry, unbelievable damage to the USA and it’s middle class and all workers and family’s! ;( (I never remained silent during that time about my major shock and concern.) If you think all this was great I have two words to say to you, ####-&*#, that is how I feel about your stance on this topic!
You still don’t get it, and are too close to the front lines to see the strategic picture. China was always meant to lose just around now, just as the American workers of the previous generation were meant to lose when they got too uppity.
Brandon Smith at alt-market talked about for years how China would be the new Globalist champion.
I never believed that, but he made good points that were irrefutable. However, the pivot to Asia began under the globalist Hiliarian Obama administration. The globalists were about to undo China, just as they had built it, they could destroy it.
Just as China was rebuilt as the Ugly American, so America was to be rebuilt as Ugly Chimerica in the service of Neocon (Euro) globalism.
Its just that Trump hijacked that plan and will attempt to add the Chinese characteristics of self-sovereignty, except as a genuine American self-sovereignty.
We’ve even got a Chinese-style surveillance state; since we helped China develop theirs, its actually a globalist system. The smartphone-based social credit system will probably be carried over under the pretext of COVID-19 tracking.
China inc., served its purpose and is done.
However, the transition is shock-and-awe clumsy, without regard for letting the China-oriented economy down easy. Which is either a feature or a bug.
The Made in China years were great for all those who succeeded at the old China game. There will always be winners and losers when a new cronyinst tune is called, but the capitalist game continues.
Those “low paying factory jobs” you speak of were actually good paying jobs with benefits. I know, my town and state lost plenty of them. And those workers didn’t end up with those “well paying tech and administration jobs” you also speak of, they ended up with much lesser paying jobs with no benefits at places like Wal-Mart.
“Those ‘low paying factory jobs’ you speak of were actually good paying jobs with benefits.”
And US manufacturing has been increasing, not decreasing, for the last 30 years.
Sure. And they’re now lower paying jobs with less benefits. And where I live, that doesn’t even apply. They’re gone. So I stand by what I said.
This Oxford study from 2017 suggests America did not crash with offshoring. Americans adapted, and those who did not, or could not, paid a high price.
“Understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship”
https://www.uschina.org/sites/default/files/OE%20US%20Jobs%20and%20China%20Trade%20Report.pdf
What happened was technological change. The jobs you speak of, were already on the way out. We just missed the retooling of the factories because that went to China, and from China, to the rest of Asia.
What happened was apparently just like in the 1930s, when electrification changed the economy and markets out from under workers. China was a non-player in the 1930s; a newly electrified economy was not offshored, but time was needed to adapt.
“The labour market consequences of technology adoption: Concrete evidence from the Great Depression” – Miguel Morin, April 16, 2016.
https://voxeu.org/article/technology-and-unemployment-evidence-great-depression
Excerpts from “Understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship”, p. 13.:
“… US trade deficit with China is overstated. … As it plugs into the global industrial supply chain, China is the “Great Assembler….””
Those well-paying jobs you speak of, were already becoming obsolete. What was offshored to China, were post-industrial low-skill assembly jobs.
Had those jobs remained, U.S. workers would be working in factories retooled for a new kind of production, favouring China-like conditions. Which even for Apple in China, were suicide-inducing.
That, or iPhones and action figures would be far more ridiculously priced than they are.
“The OECD estimates that about one-third of the content of Chinese exports is foreign, compared with just 15 percent of US exports. … even in key growth markets — computer equipment, electronics, and electrical machinery — the foreign content of goods … re-exported from China is still roughly 50 percent.”
U.S. factories that remain, assemble high-value items with parts sourced from all over the world, like cars and trucks. Cars are dying out, automation is creeping in, and jobs making trucks and SUVs are sneaking out the back door to Mexico.
Cut China out, and that still leaves the rest of Asia and Latin America, which China sources from.
Essentially, part of this fight, is to take over China’s Asian/global networks and centre them in U.S. friendly countries, not necessarily the U.S..
“Trump administration pushing to rip global supply chains from China: officials” – Humeyra Pamuk, Andrea Shalal, Reuters, May 4, 2020.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-china-idUSKBN22G0BZ
“…The U.S. government is working with Australia, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and Vietnam to “move the global economy forward,”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said April 29.”
Notice, Pompeo did not mention taking jobs back the the U.S. mainland.
If we rejected China-like working conditions – as our higher standard of living would demand – that would only have hastened offsetting our labour by AI and automation.
In effect, the jobs you speak of, were already done and cannot be brought back.
Jobs that couldn’t be easily offshored, like meatworking, were perfected to the peak of manned efficiency. Yet, even something as complex as meatworking faces renewed impetus to automate (further) because automated meatcutters don’t get COVID-19.
“Adjusting the trade balance to account for the value-added content of exports cuts the US trade deficit with China in half, to about 1 percent of GDP. This is broadly equivalent to the US trade deficit with the European Union.”
Absorb that for a moment. Accounting for value added, the U.S. trade deficit with China is equal to that with Europe, at around 1%. Plus, U.S. corporations hold the patents, and, the lion’s share of the profits eventually reside (un-repatriated) in U.S. banks.
“… growing — strengths of the US economy, namely the service sector. The United States has a surplus with China of 0.2 percent of GDP on trade in services, up from 0.02 percent in 2000. … factored in, the US deficit with China falls to just 0.8 percentof GDP. As a share of GDP, the overall US trade balance with China has remained relatively stable since 2009…”
The service sector isn’t working at Walmart. Its also financial, technical, and other consulting and management services. Its the gig economy, like Uber contracting and Instagram social influencer.
The boys that stayed at home expecting the jobs their fathers and grandfathers had, yes, they were put out, but those jobs were never going to be there for them even without China.
They had to be prepared to adapt to the economy, because the economy was already set to move on with or without them. Walmart, was just the lowest of dozens of options.
https://simplicable.com/new/service-industry
You said they were “low paying factory jobs”. They weren’t. Whether “they were on the way out” or not doesn’t make them “low paying factory jobs”. Nothing else you say makes them “low paying factory jobs”.
A fair criticism of an oversimplification.
Nonetheless, employment in manufacturing has not tracked with the steady rise in manufacturing output in the U.S., and, real wages have stagnated since 1969 (offshoring began in the late 1970s).
What happened, was stuff got cheaper, hiding that tech changes and offshoring that made stuff cheaper, also cheapened the value of manufacturing labour.
neither wants to do anything but establish a solid trade agreement that benefits both sides which is impossible. i suppose we have to give in and pay more for china’s goods.
Read the labels; Made in China is disappearing; Made in India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Mexico is fast replacing China.
China is moving up the value chain, but also off dominance on store shelves.
Been that way for the past five years at least, with Made in the USA appearing only sporadically, likely something friendly to AI and automation or artisanal.
“Chinese Intel Ministry Warns of Growing Risk of War With US”
This is exactly what the United Corporation of America strives for.
This is the only way the sinking USS empire can prolong it`s hegemony and destructive behavior.
The US stands for a Unipolar world, the BRICS and most countries stand for a Multipolar world.
It is enshrined in the US security/military doctrine, to destroy any who can threaten US hegemony…..even those who may be in the far distance.
Some in the US might imagine this would prolong US hegemony. In fact, it is exactly the sort of discontinuity that could upend the past status quo. It is the greatest danger to the US, as status quo power.
Cui Bono? France helped China establish that BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.
“WUHAN P4 LABORATORY – A PART OF PANDORA’S BOX” – himalaya_hawk, 2020-02-20.
https://gnews.org/119075/
U.S. and Chinese globalist factions may have released the virus against the will and knowledge of the nationalist elements ostensibly in power in those countries, effectively playing them as ‘dumb giants’ against one-another.
France and the EU could regain geopolitical ground coming up the middle of a U.S.-China war. At the very least, the middleman trade between the U.S. and China is served if the two cannot deal directly with one another.
Cutting out the middleman is what real global trade is all about, Reduced losses to a middleman power was the source of both China’s rise and continued rise of the U.S. after Cold War I ended.
“FDR’s Anti-Colonial Vision for the Post-War World: ‘As He Saw It’ Revisited” – Matthew Ehret, Strategic-Culture, April 12, 2020.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/12/fdr-anti-colonial-vision-for-post-war-world-as-he-saw-it-revisited/
“The Project for a New American Century and the Age of Bioweapons: 20 Years of Psychological Terror” – Matthew Ehret, Strategic-Culture, April 8, 2020.
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/08/project-new-american-century-and-age-bioweapons-20-years-psychological-terror/
“U.S. and Chinese globalist factions may have released the virus”
Or it could just be what it looks like — the same old periodic emergence of pathogens.
That may be the objective reality, but not the socio-political reality. Wars are seldom started on the honest facts.
At the very least, the propaganda machine was rarin’ to go when the next pandemic out of China happened, and this is a predictable event every ten years or so.
Addressing the threat of war by the most effective means possible, means having to accept some -n fact most – people do not care if this is a natural or artificial event at all.
Even if it turned out France was responsible for COVID-19, we aren’t gong to war with France. Whether or not China was responsible for COVID-19, we might very well end up at war with China (then Russia…)
The usual suspects of the alt-right would normally pounce on probable Rothschildean scheme, but not this time.
It is because the rush to globalize and outsource production has been mindlessly driven by unintelligent but power thirsty cabal, admitting mistakes is impossible.
The same elite still being in charge in both parties and the same power brokers in the shadows — the only way out of the colossal mistake is to blame China.
Tomorrow will be Vietnam, or whoever our pet du jour happens to be. Did they care THEN what will happen to our ability to support sustainable growth, food safety, health, industrial development, education or skills of populace? That is so old school! They were ti make us wealthy in real estate bubble, cheap goods from across the globe — after me flood!
What makes us think that any more intelligent process is under way NOW? It is a petty and impotent rage. It will cause damage to ourselves and globally.
It is saying to China — you are nobody without us, and we will undermine your development — there! Sooner or later you will cry uncle. There is no more appeasing us by little concessions!
So instead of correcting OUR mistakes and rebalancing through sustainable growth of domestic economy, and taking PRUDENT advantage of globalized world — we are more interested in destroying theirs.
The supremacy complex, absence of common sense, and the elite fear of backing down on full spectrum dominance, is the outcome.
No country has ever succeeded in being best at everything. It is hard to guess where — under the best of scenarios — are we heading. We are having hard time managing our economy by financial forces designed to counter market forces, as free market ideology has failed.
So we are left with a DEFENSIVE elite, the flag bearers of an ideology induced eschatological thinking leading to self assuredness bordering on megalomania.
Pompeo, as insignificant as he is in the real world of power structure — is an embodiment of the times.
“Trump Administration officials have been driving this anti-Chinese sentiment”
Yes, he has, along with a large faction of long time hawks including MOST Democrats in the national security state.
So, what happens if Xi and friends decide that China’s own interests would be served by a confrontation with America? They could distract from the GDP issues, and from lingering unhappiness over the virus, and gain an excuse to attack Taiwan. They’d find North Korea ready to oblige too, at least to complicate US and Japanese planning.
If we have one side irresponsible already, and we can see reasons for the other side to do the same, war could be very near.
Such concerns about what could be were enough in the past to shock national security concerns into a high level of realism. Now? Not so much. Shades of Kaiser Wilhelm.
Cui bono?
Only globalist Europe would benefit from a Chinese-U.S. confrontation. Before the China-U.S. split, they were both expanding in geopolitical power over their respective ‘natural’ spheres of influence at the expense of Europe’s old imperial powers. Actually, only one imperial power remains; France. The U.K. Brexited, at least formally.
China’s size was and remains, no match for the U.S. overall lead, efficiency, and natural advantages of North America forming a second Mackinderan World Heartland.
U.S. hegemony over the Eurasian fringes of the Pacific, was always of little real U.S. national interest and in some ways a liability. Resources committed there would be too quickly lost in any real conflict even if the West made the first strike.
In a ‘limited’ nuclear war, China would be focusing whatever remained of its ~300-warhead (perhaps 270) arsenal on the U.S., not NATO Europe. It only takes 100 Hiroshima nukes to kill the planet, but presumably a solid conventional hypersonic first strike against China could leave far fewer than that deployable.
In contrast, President Putin has always made quite clear, any war with the U.S. (6550 nukes), is also a war with NATO. Russia’s 6,800 nukes are additionally launch-ready with a dead-mans hand switch, while China’s nukes are mostly non-deployed in peacetime.
https://www.wired.com/2011/02/nuclear-war-climate-change/
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/05/here-is-how-many-nuclear-weapons-us-and-russia-have.html
I think there will be stiff competition between the two parties on who can be the most anti-China until the election arrives. Not to worry though, that cheap plastic sh*t will still be available at your local Wal-Mart..
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-biden-anti-china-rhetoric-could-hurt-coronavirus-vaccine-development-2020-4
Yes, which does not address the real issue of what to do with our hyper globalized economy and what mistakes WE need to fix, instead of blaming China. But the mistake was compounded by the financially compensating for the losses of mindless globalization. This remedy may be at the end of a string. World will have to adjust the imbalance in monetary and production spheres. We are not thinking anything through. We are wielding a bat — the rest of you figure it out.
We just need to pray that the bat does not get broken even accidentally.
“Globalization” is just a distraction word for “capitalism”. When you lament Chinese production, you lament capitalism.
Dr. Fauci: No scientific evidence the coronavirus was made in a Chinese lab
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/05/anthony-fauci-no-scientific-evidence-the-coronavirus-was-made-in-a-chinese-lab-cvd/
There is widespread agreement among scientists and intelligence sources to reject the explanation of the virus as manipulated. Most people are convinced that coronaviruses originate in nature and are not deliberately manufactured in a laboratory.
U.S. intel agencies only deny there was a weaponized virus – not a natural one given a little help to escape and disperse.
Gotta read between the lines of any official government statement.
Besides Trump and some lunatics, no one else are backing Pompeo`s baseless claims.
if you have proof, make them public.
Circumstantial evidence and cui bono are all we really have to go on.
Do you really expect a mastermind to step out from behind the curtains cackling an expository dialogue?
Suffice it to say, at the very least COVID-19 was a master propaganda op.
https://off-guardian.org/2020/05/06/authoritarianism-in-the-age-of-pseudoscience/
[Edit] I’ve made the counter argument before; France helped China establish that BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.
“WUHAN P4 LABORATORY – A PART OF PANDORA’S BOX” – himalaya_hawk, 2020-02-20.
https://gnews.org/119075/
Which other geopolitical players benefit if the U.S. and China take each other down a few pegs in destructive conflict? Only the imperial Europeans.
Its a charge that can be made with as much credence as saying China done it or the U.S. done it.
In a statement last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) said the US intelligence community was in agreement with the wider scientific consensus that the virus was “not man-made or genetically modified.” It added, however, that the it would investigate whether the infection spread from contact with animals or if it was “the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”
Reports last week suggested Trump was at odds with spy agencies and that administration officials were pushing them to legitimize the theory that Covid-19 came from a Chinese lab.
Intelligence sources who spoke to the Guardian this week also said there was no evidence to back up Trump’s Wuhan lab theory after a 15-page leaked dossier blamed Beijing for starting the pandemic. The sources told the newspaper that the document was not based on intelligence from the ‘Five Eyes’ network of spy agencies from the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Also WHO has asked the US for proof.
Donald Trump’s top medical expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, doesn’t believe that coronavirus originates in a lab. He reasons for this, because you can see that the virus has evolved slowly and gradually over a long period of time.
The US has a long history of false claims, lies and false flags, from the Bay of Tonkin to Russia gate.
The U.S. spy agencies aren’t denying they gave a natural virus a little help spreading around, though..
That’s actually the core of the U.S. accusation against China, that a virus they were studying ‘accidentally’ got loose.
Its a claim promoted with a high degree of Shakesperean “Me thinks he doth protest too much.”
However, China does have problems; in addition to incompetence – prestigious jobs are awarded on political points, not merit, even scientific ones – fanatical anti-CCP Chinese will do anything to hurt the CCP.
This includes betraying objective (non-CCP) Chinese national interests to ally with racist foreigners, as does the crypto-Christian Fulong Gong. The Epoch Times newspaper freely exploits white Western sinophobia, despite being racially Chinese..
Its a kind of fantacism not unlike U.S. neocon globalists who hate America, and want to see America destroyed, not merely reformed. Canada’s ruling political class, btw, is as solidly neocon globalist as any American neocon faux progressive can be.
“Federal government says Canada Post must deliver Epoch Times despite union objection” – Andrea Bellemare, Katie Nicholson, Jason Ho · CBC News · Posted: May 01, 2020
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-post-federal-government-epoch-times-1.5549462
The U.S. spy agencies aren’t denying they gave a natural virus a little help spreading around, though..
WHERE is the proof.
GET REAL.
When has the US spy agencies ever told the truth?
Where is the proof China or the U.S. actually developed or collected and/or accidentally or deliberately released SARS-CoV-2?
There is none. Its a socoio-political ‘truth’ based on loose circumstantial evidence and desire to aggress either China or the U.S. or have them aggress one another.
Logically, you have to act on the truth, and in this case, the material truth is subject to the politically correct truth, because the material truth cannot be known with any certainty.
You can’t prove anything, just challenge ‘informed’ conjecture with with informed conjecture.
US wants war….China should give them war that they would never expect which will put an end to their hegemony…!
we would wipe the floor with those 5’5″ military mites and they know it. it would be wise of them to agree to our trade deal. yes, we want their stuff and maybe should sweeten our offer which is what this saber rattling is all about. we don’t give two petunia’s about their south china sea expansion plans. let them build a port there where we can access their goods easier.