My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things. (Clifford Geertz)

China was living in deep despair after the failure of The Great Leap Forward campaign from 1958 to 1962. This country was changing from an agrarian society to adopt an industrial model. Such an approach was an economic catastrophe: More than 45 million people died of hunger caused by this ill-conceived program. China was in tatters.

Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, came out of nowhere to bring the essential breath of oxygen that Mao Zedong’s regime needed to prevent it to die from economic asphyxiation. In 1972, under Henry Kissinger’s persistent advice, the Nixon administration took a trip to China. The goal of the USA consisted to stop USSR’s expansionism in Asia. Also, to create the condition to inflate tensions between the Chinese and the Soviets. America seized the occasion to reinforce its diplomatic presence and sustaining the effort to negotiate with the URSS, and to convey a way out of the dragging war in Vietnam.

It was a well-thought strategy that produced an excellent result. Henry Kissinger and other top officials of the US administration didn’t think the outcome in the long term. Mao and Deng envisioned in the initiative a lifeline tool to break out from economic/diplomatic isolation that threatened the survival of the communist regime and to reorganize the future. Because, from that date of February 21st to 28th 1972, China had shifted herself on the international chessboard to launch the new reality the world is experiencing today.

Mao Zedong died in 1976. Soon after, China sent out many delegations abroad to report what they saw. Upon return, they shared their observation with Deng Xiaoping, who declared “The more we see, the more we realize how backward we are. (Vogel, page 218).

The GDP of China went from 364 billion yuan in 1978 to 14.4 trillion dollars in 2020. 1978 was the year when they launch the reform process under the leadership of the new chairman, Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao Zedong, the founder of communist China. Ever since that realpolitik is present in everything China gets involved. This has been a wake-up call.

Now, the United States must take a swift intervention to stop the so-called “growing danger”, that many believe China poses to western supremacy. What has the US learned from the recent yesterday?

-The United States has a long tradition of creating or supporting foreign leaders and fighting them later being as enemies. This happened with Saddam Hussein of Iraq. First, he was a friend who helped wage war against Iran aimed at overthrowing the Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime in 1979. United States empire had to bomb the Iraqis in 1991, invaded and occupied their land in 2003. First 1991’s war cost American taxpayers over 570 billion dollars; the actual second one, because is still going on, has made an enormous hole in Americans’ pockets estimated at 1.922 trillion dollars. Do the math yourself!

-In the 1980s, to kick the Soviet red army out of Afghanistan, the US administration armed, financed, and supported the mujahideen as a military proxy. Twenty-one years later, ex-Mujahideen militants, united under the leadership of Mullah Omar, became the worst US interest’s adversaries and national security threat. The George administration of George Bush had no choice but to invade and occupy Afghanistan for almost 20 years now. That war started in 2001, after the terror campaign against the world trade center, cost US ratepayer around 2 trillion $.

– In 1989, the USA invade Panama to dislodge his former ally, Antonio Manuel Noriega, from power was another unnecessary action. In which the US had to spill blood, a lot of blood, to restore regional order and to protect the vital national security interest. Needless to mention the human cost of these military interventions. Every one of them costs several hundred thousand deaths on both sides.

Donald Trump, the president of the United States of America, has been active in attacking China on all sides. One of his primary goals comprises correcting decades of fraudulent practices against US interests. Trump has been using undiplomatic terms to emphasize how the US trade with China is unbalanced and to justify a trade war against Beijing.

Wealth and military capabilities are an equation leading to imperialism. China, from the two opium wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860), was recognized as an offending nation. The Chinese scholars expanded it to 1949 and called it the “Century of Humiliation”.

The people of China upraised in 1949, to begin a revolution and promised to reverse the historical course. So, China was ready to be a new empire again, not just for Asia, but a worldwide realm to impose her vision.

As I described it in my last article on China, “China, from nationalism to imperialism” [1], this country is ready to affirm its power. Donald Trump wants to be in the history books as the one who stopped China from toppling United States dominion. Is it able to do that?

The trade war to slow down China is the beginning of a larger strategy that includes every aspect of economic development, social progress, advanced technology, upkeep of policy, and international security.

In recent days, Trump is so busy attacking China on all sides. Such behavior has convinced many specialists in foreign affairs to believe that weakening Chinese power is the essence of his administration’s diplomacy:

China is being surrounded everywhere.

– COVID-19: Trump is making sure that China is being held responsible for the virus to spread worldwide.

– Political freedom: In Hong Kong, roughly 1 million minority Muslims were detained and become the new Trojan horse.

– Ending the special status of Hong Kong is a way to punish the takeover of this country by the mainland via the recently imposed security law. An action that the United States considers as an act of abandonment of the deal “two systems, one country” concluded by the Chinese government in 1977.

– Recent laws aimed at sanctioning top officials of the Chinese security apparatus for cracking down on social dissidence.

– Authorities involved in the vast campaign of repression against Uighur Muslim minorities are under severe punishment.

-Washington has recently summoned Beijing to close its consulate in Houston. The official reason is to protect intellectual properties and American private information.

– The Huge crackdown on Chinese hackers in the United States and abroad. 2 men accused of working for china to steal Covid-19 research vaccines from company developers.

In May 2019, President Donald Trump declared: “For decades, they have ripped off the American people as no one has never done. They lost hundreds of billions of dollars a year dealing with Chinese, raided our factories, offshore jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual properties, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Organization”. That was an incredible accusation!

Put another way, the United States had been enriching the communist party in power for decades. so, many western countries are hesitant to take part in the war against Beijing.

Military improvement of China

Joseph S. NYE, Jr wrote: power is the ability to affect others to get the outcomes one wants, and they are three conditions to do that: by coercion (sticks); by payments (carrots); and by attraction or persuasion. China is building an army of over 1.4 million troops “plus a million or more armed-paramilitaries. The military budget has flourished, rising by 8.8% in 2019, or 178.6 billion dollars.

The point is, China is expanding its military ability. To what end?

The answer is to govern the world. The appearance of the force of October 1st, 2019 unveiled to the world the new muscle of China.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the communist party in power, Xi Jinping, President of China, was very clear in his speech. He declared, and I quote: “No force can shake the status of our great motherland, and no force can stop the progress of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation”. He pronounced those words minutes before the spectacular military parade, where “Dongfeng-4“, an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach United States territory in just only 30 minutes. No radar can detect it at 7672 miles per hour and can carry ten warheads (nuclear) to hit the separate target.”

I must mention other missiles, such as the “Dongfeng-21D”, are designed to hit warships at sea at a range of up to 1500 kilometers. Also, “Dongfeng-26”, “Guam killer, about the US Pacific island base; “Dongfeng-17”, “A nuclear-capable glider that foreign analysts say maneuvers at high speed to evade antimissile defenses”. “China has Dongfeng-17”, a hypersonic missile that can theoretically maneuver sharply at many times the speed of sound”. Don’t forget that China has 280 nuclear warheads in possession.

Economy and Trade

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership-RCEP, “is the largest free trade area in the world, was concluded without the United States on board. A market of 2.2 billion consumers that represent 1/3 of all economic activity on the planet”.  All the indications show that China is the ruling force behind that initiative that took almost a decade to put together. Among the 16 countries, many of them are United States allies: Japan, Australia, Indonesia, New Zealand…RCEP has just added to a set of economic and commercial apparatuses which reinforce the Chinese presence in the world, in particular in Asia, its immediate environment. We must remember that one of the major assets of the United States is being able to enjoy a peaceful political and economic environment, totally committed to its cause. This avoids having to militarily confront other antagonistic states with hegemonistic aims. Europe has a different reality, where nations clash diplomatically, economically, militarily, culturally, and even ideologically to establish any form of domination. This was the fundamental cause of the two world wars in Europe.

Advantage of a Big demography

Joseph S. NYE did not stop there; he added: “With a population of 1.3 billion, China has more big cities than any other country, the longest high-speed train network, the highest number of tourists (83 million spend more than $1000 billion), an army of over 200 million migrant workers and a healthy central government budget balance. Its ruling party has over 800 million members. If the latter individuals formed a country of their own, it would be the 16th most populous on the planet. China’s Youth League counts 90 million adherents, with 3.5 million grassroots branch organizations.

To become a global superpower, China must have the money to pay for what it wants.

Latin-American and Caribbean countries are two examples that describe the intentions of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Henry Kissinger considers Chinese diplomacy as a smooth, astute strategy to absorb much power contrary to the western approach which comprises attacking upfront.

The state of China is investing money in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. One is talking a trillion, not billions, of dollars.

I believe that the Chinese have implemented a plan to impose their supremacy since the 1970s after Mao died. Today, they have the military capacity, and the finance to materialize their dream via attraction or persuasion.

In 2008, PRC organized the summer Olympic Games. I remembered watching the opening. The artistry was so superb that sports anchors have admitted that it was the best to recent memory. The theatrical part was so beautiful; one could not stop to question the aim of China. Later, it was public knowledge that the game cost around $44 billion. This amount is only second to Sochi, Russia, which costs more than $50 billion. 3.500.000.000 people watched the Olympic game worldwide. The dragon is no longer sleeping; he is awake and is ready to cause damages.

I think China has reached such an apogee too powerful to stop. In the same way, we have considered a few American companies “too big to fail”. I can say much about China, it’s reaching a point of no return. A hypothetical systemic crisis in China would have a catastrophic economic impact that can send many countries into depression, including the most powerful ones.

Joel Leon