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.”
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
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.
I think the article mentions the same process in a different way -
It's claim is that China profits off of this. As you said -
Which the article frames as -
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.
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"
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/china-is-killing-the-dollar
:amerikkka:
Thanks for your replies. Both you and @skeletorsass have been very good.