This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Beijing is busy preparing for this momentous occasion, carefully planning which weapons to display in the annual military parade, but even these celebrations cannot distract the people from the slew of issues currently facing the nation.
Read Here – South China Morning Post
After fighting a trade war with the United States for more than a year, Chinese officials have long realised that the best precaution against Donald Trump’s presidency of wilful unpredictability is to liken it to a natural disaster. While it is hard to predict when or how a disaster strikes, one should think of all possible ways to prepare for the worst and mitigate risks in case it happens.
Economic analysis suggests that bilateral trade wars are unwinnable in an interconnected world. By firing his latest tariff salvo against China, US President Donald Trump has further raised the stakes in an increasingly damaging dispute – and America is likely to emerge as the bigger loser.
Time and again, the long view in China has stood in sharp contrast to America’s short-term approach. Sun Tzu put it best in his ancient treatise, The Art of War: “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.”
The US-dominated G1 world is long gone, and the G2 system in which America and China shared hegemonic responsibilities is now fading into memory. In today’s G-minus-2 world, US and Chinese policies threaten to have devastating consequences for the global economy.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi meeting the President of United States of America Donald Trump, on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit, in Osaka. Photo/PIB
Will the Modi government, grappling with a slowing Indian economy and keen to attract investment to revive it, take what some have called the Trump administration’s “bait” on trade and investment in return for opening up the huge Indian market to American goods?
China was an inward-looking, continental power when Mr Wu was born. It rose in part by turning to the sea. Seven of the world’s ten largest container ports are in China. Overseas, Chinese companies had by 2018 helped build or expand 42 ports in 34 countries, often as part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure scheme. Chinese operators own majority stakes in foreign ports from Abu Dhabi to Zeebrugge.
In reality, China’s longstanding suspicion of foreign influence has not prevented the government or the people from becoming remarkably adept at marshalling the flow of overseas cultural touchstones into the country’s borders, remoulding them into something that isn’t entirely Chinese, but is also totally different from its original form.
U.S. President Donald Trump at the G20 summit in Osaka. Photo/White House
The trade war is doing permanent damage to the Chinese economy every month since once production networks have been relocated to lower-cost countries in Southeast Asia, they are unlikely to return to China. The United States faces no such economic pressure.
