Freeze Peach | US-China geopolitical fisticuffs: Civilization's ultimate tech-flex (Part II)
By J.B.Browne
Gangster No.1
However, there are reasons to doubt that China will be the unique center of a new global economy partly because the global economy is already fragmenting into a regionalized economy and partly because some countries (the US) won't allow it.
Both aspects are, in fact, the same side of the same dollar coin.
Once grossly overt with Trump and now cynically covert with Biden, the America First doctrine will stop at nothing to defend its priorities and way of doing things. More than that, if China merely existing initiates a further breakdown of the globalized economy into a regional economy, the end of the US's attempt at a neoliberal New World Order where the US Dollar dominates in all trade will come to an end.
Why is this bad? Because when countries like Libya, Iraq, Iran, Russia, and China attempt to transact oil with their national currencies, they become enemies of the US government and, by extension, the most extensive military and the most sophisticated network of proxy forces the world has ever seen. You know, the same US government waging illegal wars around the planet with military bases encircling the Earth just waiting to destroy any country that disobeys it.
And the reason the American Empire can afford to keep doing this? It set itself up to print USD with impunity, without fear of hyperinflation, when it WAS the largest and most innovative economy. And the reason the US can print dollars with impunity?
Because it's the world reserve currency – reinforced by the US military, a beautifully constructed loop that needs all the protection it can get lest de-dollarisation begins in earnest and the super imperialism of economic sanctions forces the US military to retreat like never before.
Article Link: https://russiabusinesstoday.com/economy/russias-national-wealth-fund-excludes-dollar/
This month the Russian Ministry of Finance completed the conversion operations in the structure of the National Wealth Fund, excluding the dollar. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the de-dollarization process has become permanent in Russia.
"In my line of work, you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
– George W. Bush, Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005
In recent years, the upsurge in anti-China propaganda has by all accounts coincided with the US State Department's desperation in realizing how far Chinese-made technology has come. It's reactionary, nasty, and mostly full of shit. You know, like Iraqi WMDs fantastical.
It's also bipartisan.
Last month, CNN reported that the Senate passed rare bipartisan legislation to counter China's growing influence by investing more than $200 billion in American technology, science, and research.
So there ya go; it's all about the tech.
Technology Controls Civilization
With recent US sanctions on Chinese solar firms for still yet unproven Uyghur "human rights abuses," it might be pertinent to start questioning what motives like this mean in the context of American decline vs. China's rise. As we know, US or Western-led sanctions are very rarely about democracy or human rights and almost always serve a specific geopolitical goal in servitude to corporate elites. For example, in June, Italy released a research report on Xinjiang issues claiming the US sought geopolitical benefits in the name of human rights in the region.
Couple that with then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's delisting of the violent East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) from the US Terrorist Exclusion List, a more questionable narrative emerges.
Chinese policymakers undoubtedly want to push Chinese tech to drive its standards-setting processes as the global shift becomes more Sinocentric. Its unique political system can commit to long-term strategies instead of changing or compromising them, as democracies do with new administrations. The rise of China has triggered much global debate — the question on everyone's lips is whether the United States and China will fall into the so-called Thucydides' Trap.
Perhaps as global trade moves towards more complex value chains and economic interdependence among countries, we may see the world split into three main trading blocs – not unlike Orwell's map of the world in 1984 – United Oceanian States, Eurasian Union, and People's Federation of East Asia. If that happened, massive disruptions would follow and likely conflict. But if all can sort out their economic, political, security, and cultural differences, actual physical war seems unlikely.
There is one last thing.
Twelve thousand eight hundred years ago, fragments of an original giant comet impacted the Earth, causing a cataclysm beyond our imagination. Huge parts of it are still in orbit in the torrid meteor stream, which the Earth passes through twice a year and is considered the gravest collision hazard facing Earth presently.
All we need to do as a species is take all that ingenuity, all that money for weapons of mass destruction, and all that urgency for environmental threats and turn it towards not our nations and not our egos, but the protection of the Earth. Because these events, when they happen, are world-changing beyond anything mentioned above. Do we REALLY want to see the end of our species?
If not, who will have the technology to save us?
Postscript: Last year, China launched its first asteroid-mining robot. If you can mine asteroids, you can move them.
ALSO READ: Freeze Peach | US-China geopolitical fisticuffs: Civilization's ultimate tech-flex (Part I)
As he would refer himself, J.B. Browne is a half "foreign devil" living with anxiety relieved by purchase. HK-born Writer/Musician/Tinkerer.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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