It contains 36,000 Chinese characters and condemns the United States for starting the trade war. US President Donald Trump will probably dismiss Beijing’s white paper in little more than a 120-character tweet.
Released on Monday by the official Xinhua news agency, Facts About the China-US Trade Dispute and China’s Stance, is the first comprehensive document from President Xi Jinping’s administration on the new economic Cold War.
“Intimidation” and “bullying” are used frequently while Washington has been accused of “contradicting itself and constantly challenging China.” This, in turn, has caused “serious damage” to trade relations between the world’s two largest economies.
“[The US] has brazenly preached unilateralism, protectionism and economic hegemony, making false accusations against many countries and regions, particularly China,” the government document stated.
“It has intimidated other countries through economic measures, such as imposing tariffs and attempted to impose its own interests on China through extreme pressure. The key, however, lies in how to enhance mutual trust, promote cooperation, and manage differences,” the white paper concluded.
Ironically, the document was unveiled during the Mid-Autumn Festival period, a major holiday in China. It also came out on the same day as the US imposed another round of tariffs on Chinese imports. This time worth US$200 billion.
Retaliated
Naturally, China retaliated with increased duties on American imports worth $60 billion in what Beijing has described as the “largest trade war in economic history.”
Half of all Chinese goods going into the US have been hit by tariffs with Trump insisting that he could go all the way to “500,” which would involve extra taxes on the remaining imports worth approximately $267 billion.
Trade tensions have escalated to such a point that Xi’s government decided at the weekend to cancel scheduled talks with Washington.
Indeed, Cold War permafrost has already descended on the International Monetary Fund.
“Should the escalation go further, the economic costs for both countries and around the world will quickly add up,” Gerry Rice, a spokesman for the IMF, said last week.
Fitch, one of the ‘Big Three’ ratings agencies along with Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s, was even more candid after cutting global growth estimates.
“Protectionist US trade policies have now reached the point where they are materially affecting what remains a strong global growth outlook,” a Fitch report revealed on Friday.
Forty-eight hours later, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was bragging on Fox News that there would be only one winner.
“We are going to win it,” he said. “We’re going to get an outcome which forces China to behave in a way that if you want to be a power – a global power – transparency, rule of law, you don’t steal intellectual property.”
If the White House does up the ante by going all the way to “500,” Beijing would be unable to match that in dollar terms. But it would force Xi’s economic brains trust to find more creative measures, such as targeting major American companies like Apple.
‘Symptom’
“I think Trump is very much a symptom and not the cause,” Dani Rodrik, a professor at Harvard University, told the Singapore Summit, a gathering of business leaders and academics, earlier this month.
“Whether Trump is president of the United States or not, in many ways we’ll be facing such tensions. These are broad-based reactions to the kind of economic policies that we’ve pursued in the last quarter century,” he added.
Despite the ballooning trade deficit, there are bigger issues at stake for the US, such as containing China’s rise as it moves towards economic superpower status through its “Made in China 2025” policy and the $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative.
But according to the official newspaper of the country’s ruling Communist Party, the People’s Daily, the world’s second-largest economy is being punished for “hard work and innovation.”
“After more than a century of hard work, China has returned to the center of the world stage, and this is the basic fact we must observe in the China-US trade friction,” the People’s Daily stated in a commentary.
“Such a large size, such a heavy thing, can’t be hidden by ‘being low key,’ just like an elephant can’t hide behind a sapling,” it added.
Certainly, not an “elephant” holding a white paper containing 36,000 Chinese characters.
USA is using the same policy as the developing countries in the 1960s in an attempt to promote manufacturing industries. In the 1960s, the developing countries identified manufacturing activities that they want to develop in their countries. Then, they set up high import duties on the products of these manufacturing industries in order to discourage import of these products. At the same time, they asked investors to set up these manufacturing industries promising them that such products would not be imported from other countries. But this policy failed. The factories were set up but they soon became inefficient monopolies that produced low quality products offered at high prices to consumers.
Dont forget the tarifs on larger sausages, to protect the smaller Chinese male.
Yashad Rizvi, exactly! When talking about the demographic advantage of the US people always omit the politically incorrect truth that Americans are growing browner with larger penises. American leadership in the world is assured.
Thrity years ago China was a backward agrarian society. The US was at the top of the word, economically and militarily.it had a standard of living well beyond the wildest dreams of most of the world`s countries. Thirty years later China is leading the world science, economically in many areas and soon militarily as well. The US is foolish in thinking that they can stop this momentum by imposing sanctions and tarriffs on this dynamic society. The best the US can hope for is that it will slow the advance of China towards world dominance.
Another point . The US has stalled over the past thirty years, or even regressed, in the most important areas for a superpower. It has deindustrialized, and killed off an entire generation of skilled workers. it has allowed it`s education system to wither and die. Through it`s ill thought out war on drugs has turned a huge percentage of it`s citizens into drug users and imprisoned a large number of the very people it needs in it`s work force. it has allowed the food industry to manufacture food that all but poisons it`s population and makes more that half of them unfit for work and military service through obesity. It has allowed it`s infrastructure to fall into ruin. Through it`s ill thought out tax policies it has allowed a tiny sliver of the population to skim the economy and squirrell away the money, needed to rebuild the country, into offshore tax havens and hidden accounts. Throught it`s dysfunctional political system it has made it impossible to pull the country together in any meaningful way to rebuild what has been squandered. In short it has made it impossible to make America great again. Well it never was in the first place, but now giving the every man for himself , society it has become, it never will be great.
China will weather this temptest in a teapot, and within the next generation surely lead the world.
Trump has no credibility and is not a respectable man in any way, as is known to the world already. Trust on which US Dollar is built has been greatly damaged. He tries to earn his own reputation and money at the cost of citizens all over the world including US. As if Dollar dominated world system is weakened, US will suffer most, but if no strong credibility and trust, how could you go on printing green back paper and claim it an asset to other people? Simple Truth
Bri in your ass