A few months of such daily trash-talk from spring to autumn 2020, about the culpability of China for having unleashed the epidemic, started to turn the Western public against that country. In the meantime the trade-war saga has been etched into Chinese, and Asian, peoples’ memory for its racist overtones and the numerous instances of rather undiplomatic language emanating from the US. The tone of the US language was determinant in provoking the steep fall in favorable view of its own population toward China as is illustrated in the following graph.
The tone of the US language, and the subsequent fall in favorable US opinions about China, has since trapped the US political class in automatic bashing mode in order to please the unfavorable opinions of the public that had been fostered by that same political class in the first place.
While laughing off the China threat, during the presidential election campaign, Biden was forced to accommodate US public opinion once in office. The more his favorability polling scores were sinking the harsher his rhetoric and policies became toward China. But the fact is that the policies and actions of his administration toward Taiwan are crossing China's red lines while its order impeaching US semiconductors firms to export their most advanced chip models is a technological blockade which not far from an act of war in International law. Thankfully China's diplomatic language kept being logical all along thus avoiding an escalation into the abyss.
The attitude of Biden's administration clearly indicates that the US is now stuck in a vicious circle that poisons its relations with the first economic power on earth whose total wealth, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute in Zurich, had jumped 30% higher than the total US wealth in the year 2020 ! The World Bank furthermore indicates that in 2021 China's real GDP was nearly 19 % higher than the US real GDP (PPP). (2)
GDP, PPP (current international $) - China, United States (3)
After the US mid-term elections in November 2022 both sides sent signals that they were eager to talk. But the US has erred so far outside the bounds of diplomatic normality over the last 5 years that some damages are irremediable by now. For one the Chinese public will not stand quiet if the US government pushes its slow rupture of the status quo about the one China two systems policy that applies to Taiwan. That’s why any further rupture of the status quo by the US is a red line for China. Secondly the US technological blockade is being answered by a Chinese policy of technological self-sufficiency that ambitions to build an "industry-wide national supply chain" in order to protect the satisfaction of its huge market.
Having erred outside of diplomatic normality will prove to have been an extremely costly choice to the US. The biggest losers of that policy will be the US people. US enterprises will lose their biggest customer base. The US semiconductor industry, for example, is thought to loose not far from 50% of its total sales after the semiconductor blockade which will collapse its R&D budgets and force China to lead a whole country effort to lead in the field of semiconductors.
Time will tell what will be the precise cost inflicted by the USA's national adolescence impetuosity on its economy. But what is sure already is that the cost will be tremendously high. By erring outside of diplomatic normality the US political decision-makers are de-facto inflicting on their capital holders the loss of a good deal of their potential future profits. Not being beholden to one nation capital holders, who are invested in the US industry, will be tempted to run their investment portfolio from another location in order to preserve the future potential growth of their profits !
But how on earth did the US create such a trap for itself that will force it in isolation in its corner of the world thus severely limiting the future potential of its national economic actors ?
3.1. Western woke stupidity ruptures a virtuous cycle of capitalist rationality
As indicated, in "Modernity 01", the emergence of the paradigm of Modernity imposed a gradual shift from religious belief to “the reason that is at work in the transformation of money into capital”.
The rationality at work in the transformation of money into capital lasted from the twelfth century until sometime in the nineteen seventies when the ideological prejudice of Western big capital holders, against the working population, twisted their minds into thinking about gaining absolute control over the whole world. What allowed them to extend the domain of their profit generation to the whole world was a transformation of the paradigm of Modernity into a new iteration along the lines of “the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital”.
With the benefit of insight we observe that, in the short span of some 50 years, the rationality at work in this gamble (financial rationality) loaded a mountain of debts on the back of humanity. The West is carrying the biggest part of the burden of those debts and this explains the extreme fragility of its institutions that are simply no longer able to finance the costs to ensure the continuation of their hegemony.
The total world GDP was $US 94 Trillion in 2021 while the total world debt was estimated to be between 300 and 350 Trillion not counting derivatives whose notional value is said to be somewhere between $1 and $2 quadrillion (1,000 to 2,000 Trillions) ! And what is determinant about those debts is that the bulk has been contracted by Western actors !
These figures imply that debt has reached non repayable levels which means that a good deal of that debt is never going to be paid back ! But this is something that can not be recognized officially because the whole system would immediately come crashing down and reduce most people into abject poverty. The Western societal system is thus cornered to be a prisoner of the context that it has created for itself and it is forced day after day to extinguish fires that grow ever bigger :
- To ensure the survival of strategically important national economic players the central banks are printing ever more money to buy paper representing assets whose value is for the least doubtful. So the central banks have been accumulating ever higher levels of paper assets that in all probability will fetch lower values at resale !
- Central banks also play with interest rates to influence the economy. They push them down to encourage investment and reduce unemployment while pushing them up to reduce inflation but with the collateral risk of job losses. The latter is the path that Western central banks have taken lately !
- Social and environmental protection policies, necessary to avoid societal violence, are growing governments' annual deficits. But the higher the debts levels (accumulated annual deficits) the higher the annual debt charges that state annual budgets have to cover. For many years near zero interest rates have encouraged public institutions to increase their debts but now that interest rates are increasing they find themselves in an impossible situation. For every 1% increase in interest rates the annual debt charges of the US federal budget, for example, increase by some 360 billions and growing ! One day not far away Western countries will forced to face an impossible choice — or to terminate all state protection policies which will be resisted on the streets and at ballot boxes — or to repudiate their debt which will be resisted by the strike of capital holders and savers.
While over the last centuries Western countries applied the sane rationality that is at work in the transformation of money into capital, their economic systems were generally running within the limits of feasibility. Crises occurred but they always remained within the limits of correction feasibility. But with the gamble, that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital, national economies transformed into casinos. And in the absence of an impartial regulator gambling excesses have transgressed the limits of the feasibility of the accumulated debts which means that many of these debts will not be paid back and national economies will inevitably collapse while people lose their assets forcing them in abject poverty.
Few people comprehend this fundamental reality of Western countries and fewer still are aware that it condemns them to play second fiddle tomorrow in the economy-world orchestra.
3.1.1. The expansion of the domain of activity of Western big capital holders to the whole world
In the 1970’s Western big capital holders tricked Western populations into accepting the cancellation of a big chunk of their national industries. And while laughing all the way to the banks they migrating their factories to Southern countries where very low wages and very weak protection policies offered them the prospect of a multiplication of their returns. I give an exhaustive presentation of this silent revolution in "Modernity 02".
I was actively involved in this silent revolution for a short few years, as a semiconscious participant in an office of political decision-making, arguing that this was an irresponsible liquidation of Western economies. The arguments against my thesis at the time were that science and technology, marketing and design, would remain the service prerogative of Western countries to which I replied that the nature of services industries is to serve production activities and if production activities were leaving service activities would necessarily follow in a short order leaving European countries crippled.
Nobody seemed to grasp the enormity of what I was denouncing and by the mid 1980’s I decided to leave for the country where I thought the history of capitalism would shift. I have been living in China since then observing the gradual move of the center of gravity of the economy-world to East-Asia with Beijing at the core. It took 20 years for Western elites to awake to this reality. The catalyst of their awakening was the World Bank announcement in 2014 that China's real GDP (PPP) had surpassed the US real GDP. The West instantly jumped into a frenzy scrambling to try countering a reality that runs a lot faster than the poor imagination of its decision-makers.
With hindsight there is no doubt that the West has only itself to blame for letting the center of gravity of the economy-world leave its shores. Blaming China is a blatant lie that is counterproductive because it hides the causes, inside the working of Western societies, that are responsible for this historical great turning. The sole valid remedy to the crippling of Western economies, by the decisions of the last generations of politicians, is to address the internal deficiencies of their countries.
Having said this it is my understanding that most Western minds are geared ideologically into thinking that the West is exceptional and as such there is a general belief among most Westerners that the future necessarily belongs to them. Such a thinking evidently implies that the West will resist by all means available the rise of China which means that a 3rd World-War becomes a realist final outcome of the clash of civilizations. But the fact is that if the West, in its ideological folly, were to start such a 3rd World-War both itself and China, at best, would end up being crippled and the future of the whole world would also be terminally handicapped !
Faced with such a prospect it is the moral responsibility of Western populations to save the human species from the madness of their elites ! But will Western populations ever awake from their engineered consent ? The fact is that the answer to this question contains the fate of humanity !
This November 12th, 2022, Admiral Gary Roughead gave away the thinking of Western elites :
"... the fundamentals of our time of multi-faceted change and challenge are well known - China as the pacing threat, Russia as a disruptor, and Iran and North Korea as unpredictable states". (4)
The profound meaning of those fundamentals in the minds of Western elites is that "these others" are responsible for the fall of their countries into irrelevance. China is considered a threat by the West. The West is convinced that China is stealing its future hegemony. Western elites are indeed firmly convinced that Western exceptionalism confers them the right to world hegemony ! But the fact of the matter is that China is not striving to become hegemonic. This is not part of the Chinese thinking, nor of its cultural continuum (cultural DNA), as history abundantly attests. Westerners fail to observe that Chinese governance is geared entirely toward providing a decent life to the Chinese people so they can’t comprehend that China has no ambition of foreign domination.
The idea of hegemony is a Western concept that emerged, in the context of Western European countries, out of the particular dynamic that was at work in its "continuum of the societal cultural field". Western exceptionalism emerged from the convergence, in the 11th and 12th centuries in the South-Western part of Western Europe, of a chain reaction of causes and effects inherited from the past and the particularities of the local context in the land of the Franks. (5)
The only countries believing that they are exceptional, and that god has bestowed on them the right of hegemony over the rest, are to be found in Western Europe and its geographic extensions like the US, Canada, Australia and New Zeeland. For the sake of realism let's just remember that Western Europe and its geographic extensions merely represent some 11% of the world population which grows to a little under 15% when we add the populations of the other countries of the North ! In stark contrast the Global South represents 85% of the world population and growing !
Having said all this it dawns on us that all countries on earth have an equal right to strive procuring a decent material life to their citizens. Let’s also observe that this is the imperative moral obligation of all societal systems of governance. But Western governants, for whatever reason, seem to have forgotten about their moral obligation toward their citizens. Now in light of this responsibility of societal governance systems it is evident that countries with larger populations will naturally tend to have larger economies. Being the most populous country China has not been stealing anything. It has simply been doing its own thing which is to reinvigorate its national spirit and the same can be said of India that population-wise tomorrow will pass China. Note that these countries are growing their economies without plundering the rest of the world as the West has been doing systematically over the last 600 years !
3.1.2. US political servants, of Western big capital holders, lured Europeans into an energy trap
Since its inception Western democracy procedures were conceived in such a way that electoral results could be manipulated from the sidelines. Nation-States emerged in Europe as an institutional adaptation to a changing context in which merchant capital holders, and craftsmen in the 'bourgs' (bourgeois), took a preponderant role in the economies of European cities. The fight for power that ensued between the 3 Western societal estates (clergy, nobility, and the bourgeoisie of merchant capital holders) eventually concluded in a common understanding about the need to shape a space for the investment of the merchants profits realized abroad. This necessitated protectionist policies to avoid the flight of repatriated gold and silver to pay for Indian cotton textiles, Chinese tea, and porcelain.
This entente between the 3 Western societal estates got translated in the idea of democratic governance which meant that all males paying a minimum amount of taxes would participate in the designation of state decision-makers. This agreement between the 3 Western societal estates resulted in the industrialization of their societies. Democracy was thus conceived structurally to serve primarily the interests of the 3 estates and with the industrial revolution the capital holders would grow into the dominant force. In other words Western state institutions became the de-facto ownership of their biggest capital holders which contrasts so profoundly with China where the state is the ownership of the Communist Party and capital holders are to serve the national interest which is something that the Tai Chi practitioner jack Ma only discovered recently and at great cost.
As I mentioned here above the Western capital formation during the nineteen seventies shifted, from "the rationality that is at work in the transformation of money into capital", to "the gamble that is at work in the transformation of debt into capital". This new iteration of capital formation rapidly inflated debt levels over their limits of feasibility.
In the span of a little less than 50 years something like $2 Quadrillion (2,000 Trillion) of Debt has been issued that rests on the guarantee of dubious paper and the real value of some $2 Trillion in Gold plus a few other trillions in raw materials (6). In the particular context, of the debt repayment infeasibility, Western big capital holders, and their servants, have been thinking recently about a new iteration cycle of the paradigm of Modernity that would permit them to survive the coming cataclysm. This new iteration of the paradigm of Modernity concerns "the totalitarian imposition of the transformation of nature into capital"...
In this rapidly moving context German thinking recently lost itself in ideology and completely forgot the fact that it’s economy is powering a national production of some $2 Trillion (7) with some ridiculously cheap $20 billion of Russian oil and gas. After spitting for months on the supplier of these 20 billion Germany suddenly found itself with no supply at all. Big capital holders owning energy intensive activities were the first to think about putting the key under the doormat while searching for a rational and welcoming nation where to transfer their equipment and activities.
I mentioned earlier that after the World Bank’s publication in 2014 of its bombshell report, about the rise of China’s GDP to the world’s top (PPP), Western elites suddenly woke up from their torpor. This was followed by think tank reports that fed a debate about what to do. But in the meantime the election of Donald Trump shook the boat of globalization to a standstill.
It became rapidly evident that a re-industrialization would be infeasible in the particular context of an atomized US society and it was thought that the West would inevitably fall into irrelevance. The radicality of the diagnostic called for a strategy rooted outside of received ideas. The media vaguely relayed the options that were popping out of the creative thinking of deep-state strategists and the idea started to spread that something exceptional would need to happen to derail China’s further development in order to give the West the necessary time to regain its economic composure.
In light of this, I realize that some are speculating that Covid-19 was a gain-of-function, by US military labs, which was spread in Wuhan a few weeks before the start of the national Lunar New Year holiday in order to sow chaos and destabilize the country's economy. Many facts converge that give credence to this hypothesis, but until today there is no tangible proof available.
The Chinese military authorities were convinced since the end of December 2019 that China had been the victim of a biological attack. But without any hard proof the Chinese leadership wisely avoided to accuse anyone while nevertheless reacting as if the country had been attacked. Locking down a city of 10 million people on the eve of the Chinese Lunar New Year is an exceptional decision indeed that could not have been taken if the authorities had not been convinced that the virus was a foreign lab creation.
There were no medical studies available at the time that could have justified this kind of decision and the extension of China’s Zero-Covid policy so far as 3 years after the virus had been identified is further confirmation of the military suspicion that the country had been the victim of a foreign biological attack. And when, in this second week of November 2022, People’s Daily recounts the conclusion of a Chinese medical study, that puts the lethality of the virus for the country as a whole at 0.1%, we can only conclude that the military suspicion continues to justify the political decision of implementing a Zero-Covid policy to this day.
Without a near certainty by the military, that the country had been the victim of a biological attack, there is no justification possible for a Zero-Covid policy so much more so when the official newspaper of record informs the population that the virus has had a low lethality of 0.1% for the country as a whole. A Zero-Covid policy implies thus that the authorities want to avoid a delayed high lethality by virus mutation. Or am I missing something else that would justify the Chinese leaders’ decision to continue to apply a Zero policy with such a low lethality as 0.1% ?
In the meantime the ultimate Western decision-makers consciously stage managed the conflict between NATO and Russia with the goal of provoking a Russian attack on Ukraine that would give the opportunity to solidify the unity of the West while badly hurting the vitality of the Russian military and weakening the cohesion of Russian society. President Jo Biden was clear headed about the necessity of Western unity in all his speeches since his first day in office. But this unity is now being tested by what Western European populations are thinking about US actions : — US gas sells at 4 times the prices in Europe than the price it is being sold to US customers — the sabotage of Nord-Stream 1 and 2 — and last but not least the fact that Europe bears the brunt of the damages from the Ukrainian war.
Partners who are united in a fight for their survival avoid such an outcome at all costs. This suggests that the unity that President Biden worked hard to attain was merely a tactical move to gain something even more important than the defeat of Russia. So it is most probable that the ultimate Western decision-makers consciously stage managed the conflict between NATO and Russia in order to crush the economic might of Europe and more particularly of Germany that would push Western European capital holders, and their professional servants, to flee the madness unleashed on them by the actions of their own political decision-makers.
Western European leaders appeared united ideologically and they acted as if they did not give a damn about economic rationality any longer nor about the well-being of their citizens. The most vocal among European leaders, like the German green party leaders and other European leaders like Mark Rutte Prime Minister of Holland who seems willing to sacrifice Holland farmers and Emmanuel Macron President of France who does not give a damn about its working people and others, have all been indoctrinated, during their participation at the “Young Global Leaders” program under the umbrella of the World Economic Forum, to implement the WEF designed Great Reset in the 4th industrial revolution.
The ultimate Western decision-makers know for a fact that the USA is the dominant force in the Western economic sphere and that it disposes of a vast territory with vast resources. But they also know for a fact that the hyper-individualism, the societal atomization of the USA, its historical levels of inequality and the total corruption of the market mechanisms of price discovery, do not form an adequate context to re-industrialize. So they most probably came to the conclusion that the only way to shock the West into awakening would be to transfer the bulk of Western European capital and its professional servants to the USA.
Seen the economic earthquake that jolted Western Europe many among Western Europe's capital holders, are now de-facto searching for more adequate national contexts where to restart their activities. The US is thought to be the most likely destination for most of them but some appear to view China as being even more attractive !
All this begs the question were the politicians of Germany, France and other EU countries playing drunken ideological sailors in the wake of the Ukrainian episode of Russia's containment of NATO's advance towards its borders ? Or was their ideological drunkenness merely a screen to hide treason ? And if the latter was the case who, and how much, did the Americans possibly pay to engage in such treasonous acts ? Knowing that dollars cost the USA merely a few keyboard clicks the temptation must have been great indeed to type many zeros in order to attract a bonanza of capital and professional skills...
Whatever the answer to these questions might be the fact is that the political play of Western European elites will now inevitably force the de-industrialization of Germany and of Europe at large ! The awakening promises to be dramatic ! Western European people are indeed aghast and extremely angry at the prospect of losing their economic well-being. No doubt that politicians will now be the fall-guys to appease popular anger. And I bet that the whole political episode of their fall will hide the flight of European big capital holders, and of their professional servants, to the USA and other horizons...
From whatever perspective one looks at all this the fact is that the biggest winner in this whole adventure is the USA ! And as such, whatever might be the reality behind these facts, all Western Europeans and other spectators from around the world are viewing the USA as a forked tongue enemy of humanity that has to be ostracized and left to steam in its own corner of the earth...
3.2. Chinese openness and knowledge based
modernization
China is the oldest nation on earth. Its debuts go back to the “Tribal Cultural Unification" that started some 6000 years ago and further. Some 4000 years ago its “Dynastic State Confederation” inherited animism as its worldview while the “animist men of knowledge” became the rulers of its governance system. Around 2,200 years ago Qin Shi Huang forced the unification, of the local confederate powers, under a central Nation-State. And over the next 2000 years conquering outside forces have been governing the Chinese Nation-State, for stretches of hundreds of years, while agglomerating their own territory to the original Han territory. This extraordinary feat resulted in the agglomeration of over 60% of the present-day Chinese territory by victorious outside forces !
Having thus sketched the contextual beginning of China the country finally suffered the imperial aggression of Western powers during the 18th and 19th centuries. And its institutions, which were adapted to the long haul of slow life, got destabilized by Western Modernity while its worldview and its society vegetated until the revolution of 1949. Militant Communist idealism then mobilized the Chinese people in creating the preconditions for its future industrialization : alphabetization of the population, the irrigation of new agricultural land, the construction of water reservoirs, the pipe distribution of drinking water, the collection of waste water and so on. (8)
Within the span of 30 years the Communist party had achieved the preconditions to succeed the rapid industrialization of the country that we all know about today. The reforms of 1978 gradually opened the country but most importantly the farming population was freed to earn money by tilling parcels of land that had been distributed to them. And by the end of the first year, after this distribution of land, farmers started to accumulate surpluses. A few years later, in association with their township governments, they started to invest in township enterprises and by the midden of the nineteen nineties the most profitable of these township enterprises got fused to create industrial champions. Lenovo is one example of such champions.
But to be successful these champions needed an increasing demand to buy their products. So in the 2nd part of the 1990’s the government distributed the housing, owned by state and state enterprises, to their workers while increasing their wages. Demand for goods immediately shot to the roof and for a decade and a half the national GDP grew by 10 to 13% annually !
By 2010 it had nevertheless become evident that a reorganization of society and governance was necessary and that this would require the centralization of power in the hands of one leader in order to avoid the paralysis of decision-making because of infighting in the collective leadership. In the wake of the US crisis of 2007-2008 President HU Jintao and his team started to set the tone about what was to come in the following decade : (9)
- To keep the people's trust, in the Communist Party of China, a cleanup was necessary to eliminate the most egregious acts of corruption
- The management of state enterprises had gone wild and needed to be tamed in order to fit the activity of state enterprises in the national industrial strategy
- Stock exchanges were running wild and needed pools of state accumulated capital to erase their wildest gyrations and also to invest in strategically important enterprises
- The hostility of Western countries against China was rising and it became evident that the state would have to boost its investments in basic research while private and state enterprises would have to be encouraged to invest in market applications. That is when China started to think about ways to ensure the local substitution of Western technologies.
- Seen the growing hostility toward China by Western countries it became also evident that the country needed to rush its military modernization in order to avoid falling victim once more of Western bullying
- Programs to eliminate poverty were furthermore needed to eliminate a social inequality that had jumped to unacceptable levels that were threatening social harmony
By 2020 Western Modernity had greatly changed the country and its people. It had become evident that, for the Chinese nation to survive, Western Modernity would have to be coerced into adapting to the Chinese worldview and to the core axioms of the Chinese civilization and not the other way around. This was viewed as a matter of survival for the Chinese nation in the same way as Deng Xiao Ping was convinced in 1978 that china needed to adopt Western economic rationality in order to ensure the survival of the Chinese nation from the imposition of an aggressive Western globalization.
As I regularly mention in my writing the Chinese worldview fosters a Chinese inquisitiveness about the other-worldliness of "the other" while the West feels threatened by it, Feeling threatened the West is convinced that it has to convert "the other" to its own ways. In contrast the Chinese are pragmatic and so they are curious about the differences of "the other" which they view as a potential opportunity to learn something that could be beneficial in their daily lives.
So it is not as if the Chinese refuse novelty from abroad. But the fact is that Western Modernity is something else all together than novelty. As I argue in “Modernity 01”, “Modernity 02” and “The Great Turning” Modernity is a totalitarian ideology that originates in the rationality of capital formation and over the centuries this ideology has infected Western thinking about everything there is under the sun. I have laid out in more than 1000 pages the origins and the emergence of the paradigm of Modernity that sustains the rationality of capital formation and its evolution during High and Late-Modernity.
Suffice to say here that the rationality of Western Modernity does not tolerate any other approach of reality and of daily life than its own rationality. Such a totalitarian approach is simply not acceptable in the realm of Chinese Traditional Culture (CTC). This is why Xi Jinping's program of Modernization is to gradually leave aside Western Modernity while forging a Modernity that is appropriate to the context of China.
The Western trash-talking about China that had been initiated by Donald Trump, and has been pursued assiduously by the Biden administration, accelerated the awareness of the Chinese central leadership about the fact that Modernity is not only about the paradigm, or the rationality, of capital formation in its different iterations but that Modernity also imprints its culture to society at large and to individual life. And what they saw coming out of the West was simply appalling in their eyes. From there dates the idea that Western Modernity has to be tamed and molded to fit in the context of Chinese values which implies that the new team entering in service by the spring of 2023 will focus intensely on foreign relations and on the protection of the Chinese nation from the totalitarianism of Western Modernity.
3.2.1. The Chinese center and its periphery
China looms large geographically and historically. The cultural continuum of such an out-sized country is by now inextinguishable. This implies that its reinvigorating national spirit is bound to mark the future of humanity in profound ways. I personally view this as the greatest chance of humanity to answer "the great convergence of Late-Modernity" (8). Not only is the Chinese worldview (Chinese Traditional Culture) breathtakingly pragmatic but the country is also the only one to have accumulated thousands of years of practice and theory about the governance of a very large entity under conditions of chaos.
Amidst the predicament of Western Late-Modernity the knowledge to surf on the waves of chaos is something that will be extremely useful in the years to come — first to traverse the chaos accompanying the reorganization of the Geopolitical order — secondly to traverse the even greater chaos of "the great convergence of Late-Modernity" that will force us to adapt to the constraints of our natural habitat and also to the constraints of "the first principles of life".
The Chinese central leadership seems to be acutely conscious about both of these episodes that await humanity in the near future and, to reach maximum efficiency, they are giving a geographic structure to the implementation of their vision that distinguishes 4 concentric rings around China proper.
3.2.1.1. China as the center of its systemic vision of governance.
As I indicated here above the brutally aggressive posture, of the West over these last few years, has forced the Chinese political leadership to revise their received ideas and to come up with a plan to ensure the local substitution of Western technologies so as to guarantee the future self-sufficiency of the country in the fields of science and technology. This implies setting up a "industry-wide national supply chain" in order to satisfy the future needs of the country's huge market.Having thus defined the objective, of self-sufficiency, its application focuses on — China as the territory where the people subscribe to the Chinese worldview — on the country’s periphery and how its relates with it. The architects of the Chinese strategy forward view China’s periphery as 4 concentric rings around China proper : --- ASEAN --- New Silk Roads --- BRICS or the future UNGS + SCO --- United Nations
3.2.1.2. ASEAN
Most of East-Asia’s critical production chains run through China. They are driven by the enduring competitive advantage of China's infrastructure, as a manufacturing base. Despite rising costs and the recent Zero-Covid policy China's infrastructure remains an unbeatable comparative advantage that bind East-Asian production chains to the territory of China.The Chinese view ASEAN as a very valuable partner where to delocalize the production of parts, and assemblies, that can be realized at cheaper costs than in the country proper. For reason of its unbeatable infrastructure comparative advantage these parts and assemblies come back to China for final assembly, testing, packaging and shipment.
In a sense China views ASEAN countries as a symbiotic extension which is greatly eased by the fact that their populations are composed of sizable Chinese minorities. The common history, of China and ASEAN countries, goes back thousands of years and this history was generally peaceful. The fact that, China's tribute system was not relying on the exercise of force but on the respect of its cultural centrality, was a fact that neighboring countries have accepted over the last thousands years and they are realistic enough to continue accepting and respecting China’s cultural centrality to this very day. This is pure common sense pragmatism. But Westerners seem unable to grasp that this pragmatism renders ASEAN countries impervious to ideological temptations.
China and ASEAN will soon act as a Regional Economic Bloc (REB) that interacts with the Regional Economic Blocs on its periphery. This implies that ASEAN and China will be interconnected by the same kind of infrastructure that China has set up internally over the last decade.
ASEAN, and its Southern provinces, form China’s Southern REB. The initial building blocs of a Northern REB have been in negotiation for 2 decades already but because of bad memories inherited from history this norther REB is still in a limbo. This Northern REB centers on South-Eastern Siberia (RUSSIA) + North-Korea + China's 3 Northern provinces + Inner and Outer Mongolia + Japan and South Korea as neighboring investors. There is no doubt in my mind that, faced with the success of the ASEAN-China REB, the countries that would participate in this Northern REB will eventually come to their senses...
3.2.1.3. The New Silk Roads + the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
The New Silk Roads are : — the supply roads of resources to China — the demand roads of commodities from China. These roads combine freeways, high-speed rail lines, telecommunication lines and local development zones that will take advantage of local comparative advantages. Their destination is Western Europe and perhaps even more importantly Africa. The Chinese ambition for the New Silk Roads is to integrate Europe, Asia and Africa into one gigantic highly interconnected space.The New Silk Roads are not conceived solely as commercial corridors they will also concentrate industrial activities that will integrate the nations on their path into China's Modernity.
The New Silk Roads are the infrastructure works that will bind the ASEAN-China REB, and eventually Its Northern REB, with neighboring REBs and further REBs into a space of shared common destiny. I elaborated the concept REB while writing “A First Blow to Late-Modernity” and expanded my thinking about it in “Modernity 02” and in “The Great Turning”.
3.2.1.4. The BRICS or the future “United Nations of the Global South” (UNGS)
The BRICS were the foundation upon which were conceived the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and New Silk Roads.Russia, India, and China are representing just over 40% of the world population and their cumulated real GDP (PPP), in 2021, reached 42,316,566.27 Millions in current international $ which was 28.8% of the world’s total at 146,714,371.66 in 2021. (10)
The foreign trade achievements of the BRICS + the continued expansion of the SCO + the newly found will of the Global South to counter Western hegemony → Southern countries are waiting in line to be admitted in the BRICS.
Due to this success the present members need to define the rules of the game of admission of new members and they will also have to come up with a new acronym that easily visualizes the place of the BRICS within the global community of nations. I personally propose an acronym that maximizes the potential visualization of the place of the BRICS within the UN = the United Nations of the Global South (UNGS).
This acronym leaves no space for doubt about the role of the BRICS or UNGS. It is the force that will drive the ultimate reform of the UN.
3.2.1.5. The U.N.
The United Nations has the merit to be an existing organization. It was fashioned to champion the hegemony of the USA. So to be viable in the future it would have to be re-organized in light of the present and future reality of the national forces in presence. The West, the G7, the EU and NATO will play a determinant role in the near future but so will the Global South, the UNGS, the SCO, the Silk Roads, and other REBs.So the conversation about the re-organization of the UN will inevitably confront the visions of the institutions regrouping 85% of the world population against the visions of the institutions regrouping 15% of the world population ! The institutions representing 15% of the world population were still hegemonic yesterday evening so they will not so readily admit an equitable redistribution of roles within the present UN.
This implies that the Global South will have to continue creating new institutions that compete with existing UN institutions until the West comes to its senses. The first candidates are the 2 financial institutions in charge of managing the reserve currency which will soon be changed by the BRICS or the UNGS members.
3.2.2. China's Modernity is about a shared ecological future by equal sovereign nations
The words “shared ecological future” convey the profound truth of the absolute necessity of countering humanity's predicament that is a left over by Western Modernity for the whole world to answer. (11)
But Geopolitical conditions being what they are China needs first to complete its own Modernity before it can focus more intensely on an ecological future shared by the world community of nations. What I mean to say is that the Chinese will have to be vigilant at all times not to be bullied into submission by the west. Falling into submission would mean the end of the dream of China's rejuvenation and the end of the Chinese dream would mean the end of the dream of the countries of the Global South about their own liberation from the Western yoke.
The countries of the Global South have thus a vital interest in the successful implementation of China’s Modernity. The West, and more particularly, the USA will try everything they can think about to derail China’s further development for the good reason that China’s further development means an ever growing distance between the economic, technological, and military power of China and that of the West.
But some countries of the Global South, more particularly India, will understandably have good reasons to fear China’s power. The only way to assuage their fear will be to stand behind China helping it to resist Western pressure. By limiting China’s perceived need of further investments to ensure its own successful defense other Southern countries will encourage China to share its experience while investing in their own economies. Such a win-win cooperation is what will determine the outcome of the future new world order. So it is essential that China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Brazil, and other countries find ways to grow their trust in each other. Trust is not blindness. It grows out of successful win-win cooperation.
Going forward the Global South will always have to remember that trust is the sole unifying factor that will give its multiple poles the force to impose a new world order of equal sovereign nations sharing a common future.
Without trust power and brute force will always re-impose their unilaterality…
Notes
1. "American Views of China Drop to Record Lows", The Diplomat, by Eleanor Albert. 2021-03-05.
2. CIA, World bank, and IMF show that China passed the US, in GDP per PPP terms, sometime between 2014 and 2016. GDP is the measurement of the total annual production of goods and services by a country measured in dollars. Measured in PPP terms means that GDP is measured in terms of the purchasing power of that country’s inhabitants. According to the World Bank China's GDP, per PPP calculation, was nearly 20% higher than the US GDP in 2021 !
Some people claim that a GDP measurement does not indicate the economic power of a nation. A comparison of economic might, they say, is more accurately attained by comparing the national wealth of countries.
An article titled "China overtakes US as world’s richest nation as global wealth surges", in "India Today Web Desk" from 2021-11-16, informs us about a report by McKinsey Global Institute in Zurich concluding that by the particular measure of global national wealth China is now the wealthiest country on earth :
3. GDP, PPP (current international $) - China, United States. International Comparison Program, World Bank | World Development Indicators database, World Bank | Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme.
4. "Rethinking the National Defense Strategy", real clear defense, by Admiral Gary Roughead. 2022-11-12.
5. The paradigm of Modernity emerges at the intersection of inherited causes and effects and the context of the South Western part of Western Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries.
6. About "the totalitarian imposition of the transformation of nature into capital"
7 “$2 Quadrillion Debt Precariously Resting On $2 Trillion Gold”, Zeroedge, by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com. 2022-10-30.
8. About ”the preconditions of China's industrialization in “Modernity 02. 1.5.2.2.1. A capital formation “reset” by financialization”.
9. The Western ideological doctrine is "democracy versus authoritarianism" and Western propaganda caricatures Xi Jinping's core leadership as a nightmarish dystopia in order to create a psychological reflex of repulsion in the hope of destroying China's credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. But in reality it was HU Jintao's team that observed that the tasks ahead would be so determinant for the further evolution of the country that it thought there would be a structural necessity for a stronger core in the leadership in order to avoid infighting and decision-making paralysis.
10. “GDP, PPP (current international $)”, International Comparison Program, World Bank | World Development Indicators database, World Bank | Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme.
11. As indicated in "Modernity 02", and in "The Great Turning", the paradigm of Modernity is floundering and opening societies to the necessity of a radical shift from the rationality of capital, in its successive iterations, to the vital necessity of life.
2. CIA, World bank, and IMF show that China passed the US, in GDP per PPP terms, sometime between 2014 and 2016. GDP is the measurement of the total annual production of goods and services by a country measured in dollars. Measured in PPP terms means that GDP is measured in terms of the purchasing power of that country’s inhabitants. According to the World Bank China's GDP, per PPP calculation, was nearly 20% higher than the US GDP in 2021 !
Some people claim that a GDP measurement does not indicate the economic power of a nation. A comparison of economic might, they say, is more accurately attained by comparing the national wealth of countries.
An article titled "China overtakes US as world’s richest nation as global wealth surges", in "India Today Web Desk" from 2021-11-16, informs us about a report by McKinsey Global Institute in Zurich concluding that by the particular measure of global national wealth China is now the wealthiest country on earth :
In my eyes the debate is closed. China is already the world number one economic power."China’s wealth jumped to $120 trillion in 2020 from just $7 trillion in 2000. This marks a jump of $113 trillion in 20 years, helping the nation surpass the United States in terms of net worth. During the same period, the US saw its net worth more than double to $90 trillion."
3. GDP, PPP (current international $) - China, United States. International Comparison Program, World Bank | World Development Indicators database, World Bank | Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme.
4. "Rethinking the National Defense Strategy", real clear defense, by Admiral Gary Roughead. 2022-11-12.
5. The paradigm of Modernity emerges at the intersection of inherited causes and effects and the context of the South Western part of Western Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries.
6. About "the totalitarian imposition of the transformation of nature into capital"
7 “$2 Quadrillion Debt Precariously Resting On $2 Trillion Gold”, Zeroedge, by Egon von Greyerz via GoldSwitzerland.com. 2022-10-30.
8. About ”the preconditions of China's industrialization in “Modernity 02. 1.5.2.2.1. A capital formation “reset” by financialization”.
9. The Western ideological doctrine is "democracy versus authoritarianism" and Western propaganda caricatures Xi Jinping's core leadership as a nightmarish dystopia in order to create a psychological reflex of repulsion in the hope of destroying China's credibility in the eyes of the rest of the world. But in reality it was HU Jintao's team that observed that the tasks ahead would be so determinant for the further evolution of the country that it thought there would be a structural necessity for a stronger core in the leadership in order to avoid infighting and decision-making paralysis.
10. “GDP, PPP (current international $)”, International Comparison Program, World Bank | World Development Indicators database, World Bank | Eurostat-OECD PPP Programme.
11. As indicated in "Modernity 02", and in "The Great Turning", the paradigm of Modernity is floundering and opening societies to the necessity of a radical shift from the rationality of capital, in its successive iterations, to the vital necessity of life.
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