Attacking China Rebounds On America’s Little Helpers

Anna Chen – 13 December 2024, Trump on China

The Shanghai skyline at night

US Allies Learn A FAFO Lesson In Geopolitics

This article might contain chickens – and not just our leaders

The list of nations who did US bidding and are now in trouble looks alarming.

Who’d have thought that ganging up on China, our global lifeboat and growth engine that hasn’t had a war in over four decades, would have consequences? It’s almost as if there’s a cosmic rule we might term “FAFO” — F**K around and Find Out. A matched pair with “Honi soit qui mal y pense” — evil to those who evil think — going to the dark side is proving costly.

And this time, China might not save us the way it did after America’s 2008 Great Financial Crash. So play nice.

Karma’s Naughty Step Round-Up: The Master Race

USA: Joker’s in the White House once more, this time bringing all his friends. Not only won’t the mighty US be immune from polio if the quacks get their way, it won’t be immune from any recession created by Donald Trump’s coming tariff binge either. China’s trade and tech ascendence looks inexorable no matter what the fading hegemon throws at it.

With self-reliance now an existential imperative, China finally responded to years of a one-sided protectionist trade war with a $690 Billion cut to US imports, ending America’s privileged role as a key supplier. US agriculture is already reeling from the self-inflicted gut punch, losing its biggest buyer of soybeans — down to 18 percent this year and falling. Other industries are following suit.

Cry for the US people but not for its elites who are doing fine, thank you.

GERMANY: From cock of the Euro roost in one of the three dominant global blocs to chicken dinner not a winner. Chancellor Olaf Scholz swerved Germany from its prosperous China trade trajectory to aiding the rival US bloc in NATO’s war in Europe.

Not one inch eastwards, keep Ukraine neutral and don’t get involved with the 2014 coup: that’s all you had to do. Instead, replacing cheap Russian gas with America’s expensive LNG has wrecked Germany’s industry. And now you’re sailing warships through one-China’s Taiwan Strait?

War ‘n’ poverty, huh!, who is it good for? Absolutely no-one. The electorate knows this, lost confidence in Scholz and is about to punish him at the ballot box.

FRANCE: Similarly with President Emmanuel Macron, whose newly-appointed Prime Minister Michel Barnier has been ousted in a vote of no confidence, replaced by Francois Bayrou. Wants to continue EU tariffs on China where Scholz saw the light but too late to stave off disaster. A tough guy Sophie’s choice – who to please? Macron promises to continue war against Russia if Trump commits coitus interruptus and pulls out, but can the French afford it?

CANADA: Justin Trudeau’s constant stream of China invective can only ingratiate and deflect from Canada’s dire economy for so long, especially now that the “friendly” US is about to rack up trade tariffs on its neighbour to the north. Trump actually told him: 25 percent tariffs or become America’s 51st state. “Governor” Trudeau’s limp trade tariff retaliation and Ontario energy threat against the 300 pound bully is fooling no-one. One of America’s Viking war party. Another white settler nation that climbed aboard the USS Titanic to its own detriment.

AUSTRALIA: After the UK’s spectacular Brexit self-harm, the next US ally to reverse its own fortunes was Australia. This is, after all, the home of the boomerang. Perfectly placed to prosper from its Asia locale, Oz folded like origami under pressure from that other, bigger white settler colony that wiped out its native peoples. Right on cue in April 2020, ministers Peter Dutton and Marise Payne blamed China for Covid. China. Their biggest trading partner buying a third of their produce and putting two jet-skis and multiple cars in every Australian driveway when the global economy was melting down in the US Great Crash. That China.

Never mind, the trade was picked up by the US whose farmers were delighted to have a huge new market vacated by Oz. AUKUS is a similarly painful stitch-up costing billions and making them a target in any proxy war America might have out East.

UNITED KINGDOM: Now fully morphed into US Airstrip One. May enter recession soon. A tiny island excrescence off the arse end of the Eurasia landmass from which we could have prospered had we not done the dirty and splintered the EU bloc in service to the US. It is the monkey most likely to be used to teach the other monkeys a lesson.

Farewell, post-war liberal order. Hello, Oligarchy.

Karma’s Naughty Step Round-Up: Pacific Rimmers

SOUTH KOREA: President Yoon Suk-yeol makes Dracula’s Renfield look like a model of independence and rectitude. Yoon crooned embarrassingly to American Pie for Joe Biden in the White House, literally and figuratively. His constant drone of anti-China drivel may have pleased his masters, but he over-reached when he attempted a coup back home and declared martial law.

The US didn’t leap to his aid, quelle surprise. Horrified mass protests not seen in the country for decades put him back in his box within a few days. Under threat of impeachment he suddenly blames China for his actions. Kids, do not grow up to be like this.

JAPAN: Occupied by America since the end of the Second World War, and stagnating since the 1980s Plaza Accord hobbled its economy, Japan is in no position to buck orders. October’s snap election lost the ruling coalition its parliamentary majority. Shigeru Ishiba, Prime Minister since October, is not having an easy time.

PHILIPPINES: In 2022, the young country elected Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr, son of the famed kleptocrats with all the shoes, gallon bottles of Chanel and bullet-proof bras financed by America. After the US cooled off collecting the $3.9 billion tax owed on his late father’s plundered funds since he took office, Bongbong undid the stable relations with the regional superpower and pinned a target on the island nation by extending it as a US base. A growing economy that could easily be curtailed by war.

Chief talent: stirring conflict in the South China Sea. The US is not a member or upholder of UNCLOS.

Who’s Still Kissing The Ring?

So. NATO, under threat of defenestration by the incoming Trump administration, finds itself another project now that Ukraine is likely off the menu: getting that Viking raiding party together. Blaming China for its own messy losses to Russia, NATO has conveniently discovered China’s “strategic competitor” status from 2017 now that Donald Trump has been reelected and everyone knows what he wants.

Oh no, says a face-palming Mark Rutte. We picked a fight with a sleeping dragon that can build munitions faster and better than we ever dreamed. Better kick it some more.

Don’t say: What’s China got to do with the North Atlantic?

Do say: Give us more impossible tasks to perform. Where do I kiss?

When China Was Our Global Lifeboat

It’s amazing to remember that only eight or so years ago the world was enjoying relative stability as China’s productive economies of scale kept inflation near zero; there were few flashpoints, and the global south was headed economically north. The Great Crash was over, thanks to China’s intervention. Wall Street was happy. We were all friends.

However, America’s best days were over. The Crash had exposed its weaknesses and, although China saved it, no good deed goes unpunished when you are supposed to be king of the heap. Seeing America’s green-eyed monster squaring up to the dragon, the IMF’s Christine Lagarde pointed out we were at last emerging from the USA’s Great Financial Crash of 2008 in sync, so don’t f**k it up!

Did they listen? Heck, President Trump doubled down on Obama’s Pivot to Asia and began his mobster move on the rising superpower, threatening to turn the Golden Goose into a dead duck.

What was Donald Trump’s trade war REALLY about? (Anna Chen 2018)

When Trump’s trade war failed to bring China to its knees, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) backed riots in Hong Kong. The protest leaders were treated like movie stars in Washington and mentored by the old imperialists. Nancy and Joshua in a tree. K. I. S. S. I. N. G.

Hong Kong’s last colonial governor and BBC Trust chair, Chris Patten, even wrote the foreword to their figurehead’s manifesto because Chris wants his Empire back and no steenkin’ Joint Declaration signed by Britain and China is gonna stop him. Even though the last six words of the pertinent clause promises Hong Kong will enjoy full autonomy, “except in Foreign and Defence Affairs“. Six little words that are always left out. Funny that.

China exercised its right to a National Security law in Hong Kong, just like everyone else in the world, and drew the former Opium Wars colony into the bosom of the motherland.

Under the West’s relentless pressure, China’s growth plummeted … to 5 percent. And it still outstripped the covetous band of declining nations now lining up to pillage the rising superpower like a bunch of Dark Age Berserkers drunk on bull’s blood, testosterone and memories of when they were the Master Race.

(EDIT: And don’t even get me started on Covid …)

Brexit vote animation: how Chinese view Britain's vote to leave the European Union

A thousand years of the changing map of Europe in one time-lapse video

Definite Wow! factor in this video of the changing map boundaries of Europe over the last 1,000 years. I quite liked the dramatic Inception music track.

Sad to think that every time there's a lurch in the boundary changes, people died.

Keep an eye on them Golden Horde Mongols!

GAUCHE: A LEFT TAKE ON THE EURO CRISIS

GAUCHE: A LEFT TAKE ON THE EURO CRISIS: by Paul Anderson, Tribune column, 24 November 2011

Eurosceptics crowing about how they have been vindicated by the Eurozone crisis are beginning to drive me nuts. I don’t think they have been vindicated, but that’s for another column. What matters now is this:

1. Like it or not, a calm negotiated dissolution of the euro is not possible
It is true that currency unions have in the past been dismantled without catastrophic economic disruption. In recent years, Britain’s currency union with Ireland ended in 1979 when Ireland joined the European exchange rate mechanism; and Slovakia and the Czech Republic introduced separate currencies in 1993 after Czechoslovakia’s “velvet divorce”.

It is imaginable that at some time in the future the Eurozone could be broken up by mutual consent of its participants without precipitating disaster (whether that is a desirable outcome is another matter). This is, however, utterly implausible in the near future. The bond markets are in a state of panic and smell blood, and not even the smallest reduction in Eurozone membership – a Greek exit – could take place without triggering further panic that forced Italy, Portugal and Spain out too. The only plausible scenario for ending the euro as we know it in the foreseeable future is a chaotic collapse.

2. The collapse of the euro would be a disaster for Britain
Such a collapse would be ruinous for every country that was forced out. In the run-up to exit, they would experience catastrophic capital flight. Their banks would implode and credit would disappear. As businesses failed, unemployment would rocket – and people left in work would find their living standards and purchasing power slashed as a result of the devaluation that euro exit would inevitably bring.

The impact would be felt throughout the world. Germany and other countries still in the Eurozone would go into deep recession as their banks took the hit of defaults on loans to the leaver countries and as their exports to those countries slumped. Britain would take an economic hammering. The Eurozone is Britain’s biggest export market, responsible for nearly half of British export revenues, and British banks are massively exposed to Eurozone debt. The disintegration of the Eurozone, and the consequent wider economic downturn, would be a calamity for Britain.

3. The euro must be saved
It follows that it is in everyone’s interests, including Britain’s, for the euro to be rescued. The key question is how. This, of course, is what the European political class has been arguing about for months – without providing a credible answer, which in turn has exacerbated the crisis as the markets have factored in the possibility of meltdown.

The immediate priority is to end the bond market panic to allow the Eurozone debtors to borrow more at reasonable rates of interest. The problem is that this requires the Eurozone as a whole to underwrite their borrowing – which means Germany, as Europe’s biggest creditor nation, taking on responsibility for the debts of southern Europe, either directly or indirectly. Up to now, however, the Germans have refused to do so. The German economic policy establishment, horrified by the prospect of inflation above all else, considers that the priority is for the indebted countries to reduce their debts and has ruled out the European Central Bank acting as lender of last resort. German voters balk at their taxes bailing out what they see as profligate and lazy southern Europeans.

The most likely way out of this impasse is that a deal will be struck whereby the Germans relent on bankrolling the Eurozone, but only on condition that the debtor countries immediately implement draconian austerity budgets and accept tough, intrusive Eurozone-wide budget rules.

That would calm the bond markets, but at great cost:

Austerity would almost certainly strangle what little growth there is in southern Europe, with knock-on effects for everyone else.
Such a regime would place the burden of paying for the sovereign debt crisis – which, lest we forget, is the result of the global banking crisis of 2008 and the ensuing recession, not decades of state profligacy – almost entirely on the shoulders of the working class.
Handing over responsibility for overall economic policy to the Eurozone would mean that the key decisions on taxation and spending would no longer be taken by democratically elected governments – a dramatic erosion of national sovereignty.
So what should democratic socialists do? First, argue for a recasting of the role of the European Central Bank to include pursuit of growth as well as stability. Second, press for a fairer sharing of the pain of austerity by ensuring that the rich pay more, starting with a Tobin tax. And third, demand a massive increase in the powers of the European Parliament, the only Europe-wide democratic institution, to maximise accountability of the new economic policy regime.

It’s hardly a panacea, but it’s a lot better than crowing.

Tony Blair: King of the World

Pic: "I want THIS much!"

Now Neil and Glynis Kinnock join in the cheerleading for Tony Blair to be made President of Europe. What, only Europe, Tone?

How corrupt do you have to be to continue rewarding the man who took Britain into an illegal war with Iraq which pillaged that country's resources, murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, and has turned it into a basket case. It's not like he hasn't already been paid for services rendered, with JP Morgan shoving millions at him, the US lecture circuit syphoning dosh into his coffers, and Kuwait and Israel giving him vast sums.

And where was our peace envoy while this was happening? (Hat tip Socialist Unity)

Do they want the rest of the world to hate us?

Tony Blair: King of the World

Pic: "I want THIS much!"

Now Neil and Glynis Kinnock join in the cheerleading for Tony Blair to be made President of Europe. What, only Europe, Tone?

How corrupt do you have to be to continue rewarding the man who took Britain into an illegal war with Iraq which pillaged that country's resources, murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians, and has turned it into a basket case. It's not like he hasn't already been paid for services rendered, with JP Morgan shoving millions at him, the US lecture circuit syphoning dosh into his coffers, and Kuwait and Israel giving him vast sums.

And where was our peace envoy while this was happening? (Hat tip Socialist Unity)

Do they want the rest of the world to hate us?