Foreign Policy Category Archive

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China and America: Scoping Out the Megacepts

Fred Reed • February 7, 2020

• 1,500 Words • 90 Comments • Reply

Today, regarding China and America, we will have Thought Most Potent, adequate to lube a diesel, curdle milk, or seal a driveway. Whole departments of international studies will close their doors in despair. Ha. Why, we ask, does it seem that the Middle Kingdom advances speedily on so many fronts, while the US doesn’t? The... Read More

Remarks on the US/China “Trade Deal”

Paul Craig Roberts • January 18, 2020

• 400 Words

The first thing to understand is that it is not a trade deal. It is Trump backing off his tariffs when he discovered that the tariffs fall on US goods and American consumers, not on China. Trump is covering his retraction by calling it a trade deal. China’s part of the deal is to agree... Read More

China, Number One Economic Power for Half Decade, Dashes On

Ignorance or Denial by the U.S. Poses Grave Dangers

John V. Walsh • January 14, 2020

• 3,600 Words • 197 Comments • Reply

The recent China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai attracted little attention in the Western press but it is one more reminder that China is an economic and trading powerhouse that has surpassed the US. That is right, the word is “surpassed.” The CIIE also serves to remind us that China’s economic power now stands... Read More

Seeking Truth from PISA Facts

Testing Chinese and American Kids

Godfree Roberts • December 5, 2019

• 6,700 Words • 222 Comments • Reply

Every three years the OECD tests fifteen year-olds around the world in reasoning and self-expression. China, aspiring to join the OECD club of developed nations, entered seven regions with a total population of 250 million–Beijing, Shanghai, and Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan–and the results from the most recent tests were released this week.... Read More

Above, modern China, and a homeless camp in San Francisco

October Diary: China Rising, America (And Christianity) Declining; FORBES's Misleading Advice to Girl Backpackers; Etc.

John Derbyshire • November 3, 2019

• 3,900 Words • 315 Comments • Reply

I spent most of September in China, so last month's diary was all China, China, China. This month's won't be; but I do have a few afterthoughts to record. A few days after I returned, just when I thought I'd gotten China out of my system and was ready to concentrate on America and her... Read More

US-China "Trade" War? No Way. Only the Defeat of Turbo-Capitalism!

Andre Vltchek • October 17, 2019

• 1,800 Words • 88 Comments • Reply

It is very popular these days to talk and write about the “trade war” between the United States and China. But is there really one raging? Or is it, what we are witnessing, simply a clash of political and ideological systems: one being extremely successful and optimistic, the other depressing, full of dark cynicism and... Read More

China On the Mind: Is A “Sputnik Moment” Coming? Could the U.S. Respond If It Did?

John Derbyshire • October 14, 2019

• 1,700 Words • 363 Comments • Reply

Earlier by Patrick J. Buchanan: Is China the Country of the Future? I still have China on my mind following last month's jaunt there. My conclusion: they’re going to eat our lunch—unless we have a “Sputnik Moment.” And even then, unlike in 1957, it’s not clear the U.S. can respond. Look at the flap involving... Read More

Should We Compete with China? Can We?

Godfree Roberts • October 14, 2019

• 2,500 Words • 559 Comments • Reply

In 2003 I published a book charting America’s decline in thirty-six social and economic indicators. I mailed copies to the Administration, Congress and department heads and received one reply, from the Director General of the Central Intelligence Agency, saying that the Agency had been providing almost identical information to the government for decades. Since then... Read More

Making China Great Again

Eric Margolis • October 5, 2019

• 700 Words • 17 Comments • Reply

China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.” Napoleon Bonaparte France’s future emperor never saw China, but he was wise enough to understand its immense latent strength and future importance. Two centuries after making this prediction, China has proved the Corsican correct. Last week, China feted... Read More

Western Intellectuals Freak Over ‘Frankenstein’ China

… while academics in Beijing plot decoupling business with the US and teaming up with EU and ASEAN

Pepe Escobar • July 18, 2019

• 900 Words • Leave a Comment

Western economists and intellectuals obsessed with demonization of China are never shy of shortcuts glaringly exposing their ignorance. The latest outburst posits that “we” – as in Western intellectuals – “are the modern version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” who electro-shocked a dead body (China) into a resurrected “murderous monster.” So, welcome to the Sino-Frankenstein school... Read More

China Trade War: America's Policy Dilemma

Godfree Roberts • July 13, 2019

• 3,100 Words • 223 Comments • Reply

EMBARGO DILEMMA Modern China has spent forty of its seventy years under American and Western embargoes, so the current round is nothing new. How likely is it to succeed? In 1949 Mao inherited the poorest country on earth, devastated by a century of wars, occupation, disease, and famine. The US immediately broke all contacts, withdrew... Read More

Trump’s Trade Threats Are Really Cold War 2.0

The G20 Meeting in Japan

Michael Hudson • June 13, 2019

• 900 Words • 161 Comments • Reply

President Trump has threatened China’s President Xi that if they don’t meet and talk at the upcoming G20 meetings in Japan, June 29-30, the United States will not soften its tariff war and economic sanctions against Chinese exports and technology. Some meeting between Chinese and U.S. leaders will indeed take place, but it cannot be... Read More

When China Leads the World

Hegemony vs. Humane Authority

Godfree Roberts • June 13, 2019

• 4,400 Words • 243 Comments • Reply

In the course of his study of the Peloponnesian War Thucydides, the fifth century BC Greek historian, claimed that interstate relations are based on might, not right, and that states’ strategic interactions follow a recurrent pattern: while a change in the hierarchy of weaker states does not ultimately affect a given system, disturbances in the... Read More

Human Rights in China and America

Godfree Roberts • May 26, 2019

• 3,000 Words • 513 Comments • Reply

We Greco-Christians seek personal liberation from worldly bondage and prioritize abstract rights like unfettered, irresponsible public speech, export these values as ‘human rights’ and use them to justify invading smaller countries. That does not impress the Chinese, says Randall Nadeau⁠1, “Christian-based Western values like radical autonomy of the individual, the soul in a transcendent relationship... Read More

China and Russia: Whoopin' Uncle Sam at His Own Game

Mike Whitney • May 2, 2019

• 1,600 Words • 246 Comments • Reply

Your Geopolitical Quiz for the Day: Two countries are embroiled in a ferocious rivalry. One country's meteoric growth has put it on a path to become the world's biggest economic superpower while the other country appears to be slipping into irreversible decline. Which country will lead the world into the future? Country A builds factories... Read More

Yesterday’s Country

Not to Worry, They Can’t Innovate

Fred Reed • April 17, 2019

• 1,300 Words • 590 Comments • Reply

For many years the United States has regarded itself as, and been, the world’s technological leader. One can easily make a long and impressive list of seminal discoveries and inventions coming from America, from the moon landings to the internet. It was an astonishing performance. The US maintains a lead, though usually a shrinking one,... Read More

China Overrated by Right-Wing Kooks

These Crazies Are Just Like Hitler

Fred Reed • January 6, 2019

• 1,200 Words • 310 Comments • Reply

One often sees the silly assertion by right-wing extremists that feminists, social justice warriors, and other “cranks” are enstupidating American education. The purpose, according to these fascists, who are just like Hitler, is “to make historically incompetent groups look competent.” The racism in these absurd claims is obvious. In particular such Neo-Nazis say that mathematical... Read More

Averting World Conflict with China

The PRC Should Retaliate by Targeting Sheldon Adelson's Chinese Casinos

Ron Unz • December 13, 2018

• 1,800 Words • 967 Comments • Reply

As most readers know, I'm not a casual political blogger and I prefer producing lengthy research articles rather than chasing the headlines of current events. But there are exceptions to every rule, and the looming danger of a direct worldwide clash with China is one of them. Consider the arrest last week of Meng Wanzhou,... Read More

Social Credit, Datong Dreams

Godfree Roberts • December 7, 2018

• 4,000 Words • 173 Comments • Reply

For centuries Western monarchs derived legitimacy from a God Who lent authority to the laws they promulgated. The simultaneous demise of God and the monarchic principle in 1918 left the law legitimized by force alone and, a century later, our distrust[1] suggests that it has failed to converge with the ethical. Things were little better... Read More

Comparing China and America

Economies Diverge, Police States Converge

Fred Reed • November 28, 2018

• 1,700 Words • 343 Comments • Reply

I have followed China’s development, its stunning advance in forty years from impoverished Third World to a huge economy, its rapid scientific progress. Coming from nowhere it now runs neck and neck with the US in supercomputes, does world-class work in genetic engineering and genomics (the Beijing Genomics Institute), quantum computing and quantum radar, in... Read More

Cheng Two: More Notes on Two Weeks in China

Fred Reed • November 20, 2018

• 1,200 Words • 212 Comments • Reply

This is my second column on the two weeks that Vi and I just spent in Chengdu, China. It is meant not so much as a travelogue as a snapshot of what is going on in an economic juggernaut. Judging by email from readers, many do not realize the scope and scale of China’s advance.... Read More

Intelligent Design: Two Weeks in Chengdu and Environs

Fred Reed • November 12, 2018

• 1,400 Words • 325 Comments • Reply

Vi and I have just returned from Chengdu, a Chinese village of seventeen million and the gateway to Tibet. Since China is of some interest to the US these days, I thought a description of sorts, actually more in the nature of a disordered travelogue, might be of interest. I hadn’t been to the country... Read More

China's Human Rights Gap

Wider Than You Think

Godfree Roberts • August 9, 2018

• 2,700 Words • 256 Comments • Reply

A revolution in the world's human rights dialog has been brewing since at least 1997, when China ratified the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, a step the US has yet to take. Barely twenty-four years later, on June 1, 2021, the country will set a human rights benchmark by becoming a... Read More

China and the US: Comparing Leadership Selection

James Petras • November 11, 2017

• 1,400 Words • 10 Comments • Reply

The US selection of leaders has virtually nothing to do with democratic processes and outcomes. It is useful to contrast this with the process in China. In most instances, China’s selection of leaders is far more meritocratic, successful and performance-based. In both the US and China, the process lacks transparency. US Economic, Political and Cultural... Read More

How Can Western Capitalism Beat This?

That's the Rub, It Can't

Jeff J. Brown • October 25, 2017

• 2,000 Words • 405 Comments • Reply

In order to understand China and how the world works, I am very lucky to have lived here during two very different time periods. It started 1990-1997. In the first book of The China Trilogy, 44 Days Backpacking in China, I called this period the Wild East Deng Xiaoping Buckaroo Days. It was intense, crazy... Read More

Selling Democracy to China

Still too soon to tell?

Godfree Roberts • August 22, 2017

• 1,800 Words • 129 Comments • Reply

In 2005, Germany transferred her high speed rail technology to China. Today, China’s HSR is bigger, faster, safer and cheaper than Germany’s, runs entirely on Chinese intellectual property and Chinese trains are displacing Germany’s in the world market. Coincidentally, in 2005, The Carter Center began transferringAmerica’s democracy knowhow to China. Today, China’s democracy is bigger,... Read More

China's Financial Debt: Everything You Know Is Wrong

Godfree Roberts • July 5, 2017

• 1,300 Words • 158 Comments • Reply

Pretty much everything our media tells us about China is wrong–or at least one-sided–including its tales of a China ‘debt problem’. The Chinese are, in all times and places, debt-averse and China’s government which, unlike ours, must take long-term responsibility for the economy, is no different. Mao set the example and grew GDP by 6.2... Read More

The China-US Arms Race

If One Arm is Right, the Other Will Be Left, No?

Fred Reed • May 18, 2017

• 600 Words • 91 Comments • Reply

This worthy and public-spirited column seldom dives into the thickets of military hardware, which it regards as excessively technical. However, the arms race between China and Washington is of enough gravity that its more exotic armaments may be of interest. Herewith, the truly dangerous weaponry of the contending sides. US Nuclear Weapon Upgrade Program: “CBO... Read More

China’s Great Leap Forward: Western Frogs Croak Dismay

James Petras • March 23, 2017

• 1,600 Words • 65 Comments • Reply

Introduction: From their dismal swamps, US academic and financial journal editorialists, the mass media and contemporary ‘Asia experts’, Western progressive and conservative politicians croak in unison about China’s environmental and impending collapse. They have variably proclaimed (1) China’s economy is in decline; (2) the debt is overwhelming; a Chinese real estate bubble is ready to... Read More

The Chimerica Dream

Two Nations, Two Dreams, One Pacific

Pepe Escobar • June 20, 2013

• 3,900 Words • Leave a Comment

Yes, the predictions are in. By 2016 (or 2030?), China will have economically outpaced the U.S. So say the economic soothsayers. And behind them lie all those, in the Pentagon and elsewhere in Washington, who secretly fear that, if nothing is done to contain it, China will within decades be dominant in the Pacific, the... Read More

China's Rise, America's Fall

Which superpower is more threatened by its “extractive elites”?

Ron Unz • The American Conservative • April 17, 2012

• 7,000 Words • 181 Comments • Reply

The rise of China surely ranks among the most important world developments of the last 100 years. With America still trapped in its fifth year of economic hardship, and the Chinese economy poised to surpass our own before the end of this decade, China looms very large on the horizon. We are living in the... Read More

"China/America" Items Across Entire Archive

Category Classics

9/11 Was an Israeli Job

How America was neoconned into World War IV

Laurent Guyénot

• 382 Comments • Reply

John McCain and the POW Cover-Up

The “war hero” candidate buried information about POWs left behind in Vietnam.

Sydney Schanberg

• 149 Comments • Reply

America's Jews Are Driving America's Wars

Shouldn't they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?