A relatively short article with some key assertions. The first paragraph is definitely going to irritate some people here. But the main thrust of the article is presented later, which is -

China’s late Cold War role as the great anti-communist power in the East, and its subsequent role in financing the American empire as it invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

The article lays out a lot of history as it relates to the Sino-Soviet relations and shows how as a result -

The CCP picked the side of capital in the Cold War, doomed the international communist movement in the process

Most important is this paragraph w.r.t the Cold War -

The first sign of betrayal was China’s active role in supporting Pakistan during the 1971 genocide in Bangladesh By 1972, Mao’s meeting with Richard Nixon signaled that the full anti-communist pivot was complete. With this pivot, China became a close American ally and the bulwark of anti-communism in East Asia and beyond. By the middle of the decade, the CCP was giving out loans to Pinochet, supporting UNITA in Angola alongside South Africa and the US against Cuba and the Soviet Union and had opened diplomatic relations with reactionary capitalist powers, from the Marcos regime in the Philippines to Japan. Deng Xiaoping sealed this alliance by invading Vietnam in 1979 in defense of the US-backed Khmer Rouge which the Vietnamese government had been attempting to overthrow. The CCP claims to have killed 100,000 Vietnamese communists in that war, which broke the back of the communist movement in East Asia and essentially ended it as a Cold War front , thus allowing the US to fully pivot to its massacres in Latin America and Africa in addition to the defense of Europe against the USSR and domestic communist movements.

And in the post-Soviet world -

Unlike other major American bond purchasers (Japan, South Korea, Germany) who are American military protectorates and can thus even be coerced into increasing the value of their currency, China subsidizes the American war machine ... CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

In coalition with the East Asian American military protectorates, China filled the massive budget shortfalls that resulted from the combination of the Iraq War, Bush era tax cuts, and the early 2000s recession, propping up the flailing US economy as the war commenced. Chinese bond purchases intensified with US spending in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, the CCP became an eager participant in the new War on Terror by allying closely with Israel, adopting American counterinsurgency techniques and technologies from the rapidly burgeoning trade, and eventually hiring American mercenary Erik Prince for themselves for deployment in “Xinjiang.”

  • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
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    edit-2
    4 years ago

    The author is hoping you don't know enough about economics here and is doing a shotgun of nonsense. They're presenting the fact China buys US treasury bonds whilst neglecting to tell you this is how the USA has organised the world economy. There is nothing for other countries to buy except US treasury loans - what in essence underlies the petrol-dollar and what is enforced by the US military. This gives United States teh ability to kick their "debt ceiling" down the road every year. It will never be fixed and when it is "fixed" it'll be because the petrol dollar has collapsed and the US economy with it

    You can download Michael Hudsons book Super Imperialism which explains this exact process that the author is berating China for doing!

    Here's Michael hudson in a 50 minute interview explaining how the US essentially gets countries to pay for their own encirclement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paUgY6SGlgY

    I've provided the whole video I expect you to watch (if you want to learn the intricate details in how US does this) but here's the bit I'm referring to

    this whole thing is just all a giant free lunch for the US Empire. Well the whole financial economy is a free lunch and if you're going to get a free lunch then you protect yourself by saying there is no such thing as a free lunch obviously not want to make itself visible. it wants to make itself invisible as possible. well most of these countries in Asia get the dollars from US military spending then "what are we going to do with the dollars" they buy US Treasury bonds that finance the military spending on the military bases that encircle them. So they're financing their own military encirclement. it's a circular United States spends dollars in these countries the local recipients turned them over for local currency the local currency recipients the food sellers and the manufacturers turned the Ballet's over over to the banks for domestic currency which is how they operate and the dollars are sent back to the United States and it's a circular flow that is basically military in character and the gunboats don't appear in your economics textbooks - Michael Hudson

    The author is neglecting to tell you every country does this and if they didn't they'd probably have the US army in their capital by midnight

    China would be subsidising the American war machine either way - the USA has essentially turned the world economy into a casino where everyone pays for their own military encirclement. China may as well have their manufacturing become competitive to undercut USA.

    • LibsEatPoop2 [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      I think the article mentions the same process in a different way -

      American empire is built on debt: its financial and military power are inseparable. American deficit spending pays for the American army, which in turn is used to extract tribute in the form of forcing other countries to buy American debt that can never nor will ever be repaid. It is through this arrangement—debt purchases at gunpoint—that the American empire is maintained.

      It's claim is that China profits off of this. As you said -

      China may as well have their manufacturing become competitive to undercut USA.

      Which the article frames as -

      CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

      So, I think everyone's in agreement here?

      The point then becomes is to what end is all this happening? And while this Great Powers dance is going around, what is happening to the world? I don't really know. If you believe the end result will be a China that is socialist (once it is powerful enough to be independent) then it might seem worth it. But that calculation depends on how much (and how directly) you're effected by all this. China's involvement with Israel or their deals with Erik Prince are just two of the issues mentioned that complicate matters.

      The author doesn't provide any solutions other than an idealistic "anti-imperialist" one. I suspect they don't really have a solution to this dilemma.

      Edit - Oh also, thanks for the book and the interview. I'm definitely interested in learning more.

      • JoeySteel [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        CCP funds America’s wars in order to maintain the high value of the dollar relative to the yuan, which gives China a massive competitive edge in manufacturing and is a critical source of China’s massive economic growth.

        Is an incredibly disingenuous way of putting it and why the author is CIA or NED funded or whatever shitty NGO the US is funding to create chaos in China with HK protests.

        They are funding Americas wars because they are forced to (like every other country on the planet except Cuba and DPRK). Both China and Russia have reduced reliance on the US dollar by huge amounts in the last year. This isn't a position neither Russia or China want to be in

        https://www.scmp.com/economy/global-economy/article/3013246/china-russia-urged-continue-efforts-defang-us-dollar

        And even then Gold Money ran a great piece on how China is killing the dollar - or rather putting the US in a position to kill their own dollar as a form of "active defence"

        Do not be misled by the attribution to a seemingly independent Chinese professor: it would not have been the frontpage article unless it was sanctioned by the Chinese government. While China has already taken the top off its US Treasury holdings, the announcement (for that is what it amounts to) that China is prepared to escalate the financial war against America is very serious. The message should be clear: China is prepared to collapse the US Treasury market. In the past, apologists for the US Government have said that China has no one to buy its entire holding. The most recent suggestion is that China’s Treasury holdings will be put in trust for covid victims — a suggestion if enacted would undermine foreign trust in the dollar and could bring its reserve role to a swift conclusion.[ii] For the moment these are peacetime musings. At a time of financial war, if China put her entire holding on the market Treasury yields would be driven up dramatically, unless someone like the Fed steps in to buy the lot.

        If that happened China would then have almost a trillion dollars to sell, driving the dollar down against whatever the Chinese buy. And don’t think for a moment that if China was to dump its holding of US Treasuries other foreign holders would stand idly by. This action would probably end the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency with serious consequences for the US and global economies.

        There is another possibility: China intends to sell all her US Treasuries anyway and is making American monetary policy her cover for doing so. It is this possibility we will now explore.

        https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/china-is-killing-the-dollar