Trump Regime Hostility Toward China Not Going Unanswered
by Stephen Lendman
China won’t make the same mistake as Japan in the 1980s, costing it decades of stagnation for yielding to unacceptable US demands.
Beijing is determined to pursue its economic, financial, trade, and defense interests, unwilling to be subjugated by the US or another foreign power.
Washington uses hardball tactics to assert its will over other countries. It works in dealings with most nations, treating them like colonies.
China is strong-willed. It’s not about to roll over to the US like EU countries, Japan, and other vassal states, at the expense of their own interests and national pride.
According to Beijing’s official People’s Daily broadsheet, Trump regime policies “threaten the survival of Chinese enterprises” if not effectively countered, adding:
The US way “overestimated its ability to manipulate the global supply chain and lacks self-knowledge. (It’s) doomed to be met with a slap in the face after it wakes up and stops dreaming.”
“We advise the US side not to underestimate the Chinese side’s ability to safeguard its development rights and interests. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!”
On Friday, China’s Commerce Ministry said it’ll blacklist what it called the country’s “non-reliable entity list,” comprised of foreign “entities, individuals and companies that block and shut the supply chain, or take discriminatory measures over non-commercial reasons, and when their actions endanger the business of Chinese companies…”
The announcement responded to the Trump regime’s blacklisting of Huawei and its affiliate companies, showing it won’t tolerate unacceptable US actions.
It has plenty of ammunition to strike back. It’ll do what it believes serves its longterm interests — wanting cooperative relations with other countries, reacting strongly to their unfair practices, the US the key offender.
According to its Global Times (GT), “China is ready for a long-term trade battle with the US…(F)air (relations) can only be achieved with a resolute fight.”
“The US has shot itself in the foot by escalating trade war.” Along with posing up to 25% tariffs on $60 billion of US imports, Beijing suspended purchases of US soybeans, a blow to its agribusiness interests and small farmers.
Perhaps halting rare earths exports to the US comes next, along with reducing state holdings of US treasuries. According to GT, the Trump regime “blunder(ed) in the Middle East and Latin America.”
Its actions won’t make “Trump successful in the 2020 election. (M)essing up the China-US relationship will never make the US great again.”
At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe said the Trump regime “made a number of (unacceptable) statements and steps regarding Taiwan, which undermine the One China Principle. The Chinese side protests this,” adding:
The US should never underestimate Beijing’s determination to protect and defend its sovereignty, security, and other interests.
On Saturday, Trump regime war secretary Shanahan accused Beijing of stealing US intellectual property and militarizing South China Sea man-made outposts.
Calling them a “toolkit of coercion (sic),” he slammed what he called “behavior that erodes other nations’ sovereignty and sows distrust of China’s intentions” — how the US operates, not Beijing.
“We’re not going to ignore Chinese behavior, and I think in the past people have kind of tiptoed around that,” he added.
“Tiptoeing” isn’t how the US operates anywhere, its empire of bases in most world countries used as platforms for endless wars of aggression and other hostile actions.
On Saturday with Shanahan in Singapore, the US war department released what it called its “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report: Preparedness, Partnerships, and Promoting a Networked Region.”
It’s all about increasing the US military footprint in a part of the world not its own, risking war with China and/or North Korea.
The report falsely accused Beijing of seeking “Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and, ultimately global preeminence in the long-term” — what the US aims for, seeking dominance over other nations worldwide, waging endless wars to achieve is aims.
Shanahan’s address and the new Pentagon report are part of Washington’s imperial agenda. On the 30th anniversary of the June 3-4, 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, Mike Pence will address the incident.
It’ll likely be a follow-up to his hostile October 2018 remarks about China, at the time falsely saying it “wants nothing less than to push the United States of America from the Western Pacific and attempt to prevent us from coming to the aid of our allies.”
China’s Defense Minister Wei Fenghe will address the Shangri-La Dialogue on Sunday. Remarks by US and Chinese officials come at a time irreconcilable differences define their bilateral relationship — politically, economically, militarily, and on trade.
Hardline US policies make resolving them all the harder. The same goes for its agenda toward Russia, Iran, and other sovereign independent countries it wants transformed into US vassal states.
Pushing too hard risks global war, a doomsday scenario if nuclear weapons are used for the first time in earnest.
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My newest book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
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