Source: wechat official account: Bu Yidao has been authorized to reprint
Pen / soul chopping blade & Huyidao
In the next 10 days, the United States will act in China one after another.
On the Taiwan related issues that are very sensitive to China US relations, the United States will next link up with Taiwan from three important aspects: strategic interaction, military security, economy, trade and technology.
Especially in terms of military security, this time the United States will draw up a “weapons procurement list” for Taiwan in combination with the experience of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and its goal has been very clear, that is, it will rack its brains in an attempt to “prevent the PLA from landing on Taiwan in various ways” and use force to break the reunification.
In addition, the Biden government also plans to promote the global infrastructure construction projects hedging the “the Belt and Road” at the upcoming G7 summit. It seems very targeted.
However, after Biden fell down on his bicycle, the US president revealed that he was about to communicate with China and that the decision to cancel tariffs on some Chinese goods was under discussion. It is reported that this “major decision” since trump launched a trade strike against China is nearing completion.
Because the record inflation and high prices in the United States have become unbearable for ordinary people.
What is the calculation of the United States when it wants to “control China with Taiwan” and to solve the domestic inflation crisis of the United States through China?
On the 19th, the website of the Chinese Ministry of foreign affairs rarely pointed out all kinds of fallacies and facts in the US cognition of China in 39thousand words. It has effectively hit back at all kinds of defamatory and offensive remarks against China spread in Washington recently.
The game entered a critical stage.
01
Just a few days after the “incense party” ended, the US side began to accelerate the pace of Taiwan hook up.
On June 20, the US Taiwan “political military dialogue” will be held in Annapolis, Maryland.
According to Taiwan media, the DPP authorities sent gulixiong, Secretary General of the National Security Council, to lead a team to the United States. Taiwan and the United States will hold high-level official discussions on “how to counter the military threat from Chinese Mainland”.
Although the DPP authorities said the matter was “based on the tacit understanding between Taiwan and the United States without comment”, the website of the Nikkei Asia magazine had previously revealed some details related to the dialogue.
The report quoted a source as saying that the dialogue will be held in accordance with the “Monterrey talks” between the United States and Taiwan. The “Monterrey talks” is an important military security conference between the United States and Taiwan. It originated from the establishment of a communication channel between the United States and Taiwan involving security strategic issues after the outbreak of the Taiwan Strait Crisis in the 1990s.
It is reported that “arms supply” will be the main topic of the talks, because the United States wants to give priority to selling weapons to Taiwan that can “most effectively prevent the potential landing of the mainland”.
Moreover, the US side reportedly has drawn up a list of about 20 weapons and systems that Taiwan is advised to purchase, including anti-ship missiles, air defense systems and intelligence gathering systems that can detect the movements of opponents and give early warning.
Some analysts believe that the contents of this list mean that the US policy on arms sales to Taiwan has changed, with more and more emphasis on “asymmetric capabilities” as the priority.
This attitude of the United States has become more clear after the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Recently, the Biden administration has cancelled or rejected Taiwan’s arms purchase request on the grounds that it does not meet the “asymmetric combat power”.
The so-called “asymmetric combat power” refers to the operational strategy tailored by the United States for Taiwan to enhance Taiwan’s “self-defense capability”. For a long time, Washington has tried to persuade the DPP authorities to buy a large number of mobile and lethal weapons, so as to “use small and large” in dealing with the PLA landing operations.
This intention is obviously extremely malicious.
In recent years, some people on the US side have thought of various ways to improve Taiwan’s “asymmetric combat power”. Some people encouraged Taiwan to engage in “scorched earth” and “street warfare” in fighting with the mainland, and some even suggested that “when the mainland attacks Taiwan, the US military should destroy Taiwan’s infrastructure to save Taiwan”.
This is typical of using the Taiwanese people as cannon fodder, and only wants to wipe out the value of Taiwan as a US “chess piece for strategic competition with China”.
In addition to encouraging the DPP to further “resist reunification by force” politically and militarily, at the economic and trade level, the United States also threw out a new starting point for “relying on the United States for independence” to Taiwan – “the US Taiwan Trade Initiative for the 21st century”, and held its first meeting in Washington on June 27.
When the initiative was launched, Taiwan’s “Executive Yuan” made a high-profile announcement that it “has a complete structure and a wide range of contents” and “can be used as a road map to promote trade agreements”. It also said that Taiwan and the United States will be committed to starting negotiations and reaching “high standard and economically meaningful trade agreements”. At that time, some green media also boasted that this was advertised as “mini IPEF (Indian Pacific Economic Framework)” “showing the great leap forward of Taiwan’s status”.
The Deputy U.S. trade representative biatch also said that the new initiative “is likely” to bear fruit faster than the “Indo Pacific economic framework” between the United States and 13 countries.
However, anyone with a clear eye can see that although the “Taiwan US trade initiative in the 21st century” has been highly praised, from the time point when it was announced to be launched, this is a “pacifier” stuffed into the mouth after Wan Wan was excluded from the “Indo Pacific economic framework”.
Dengzhenzhong, an administrative Councilor of Taiwan’s “Executive Yuan”, recently told Taiwan media that the goal of the meeting on the 27th of this month was to sign a “trade agreement” with the United States, but “the signing schedule is not easy to master”. After all, “it is not easy for anyone to conduct trade negotiations with the United States”.
He said that the holding of the first meeting does not mean that the United States and Taiwan have entered the stage of substantive negotiations. Taiwan still needs some time to make preparations. The relevant consultation procedures of the United States will not come to an end until about mid July.
It seems that some people in wanwan know that their wishes are very good, but the reality is very skinny. What is waiting for them is likely to be an empty joy.
While playing the “Taiwan card”, Washington has also set its sights on the “the Belt and Road”.
White House national security adviser Sullivan said at an event hosted by the new American security center on the 16th that Biden would launch a global infrastructure initiative at the G7 summit at the end of this month as an “alternative to China” to deal with China’s influence in the world, especially in the “Indian Pacific region”.
Sullivan disclosed that the new initiative will cover global infrastructure, physical health and digital infrastructure. The United States and G7 member states are expected to invest hundreds of billions of dollars, which will create huge dividends for the entire “Indo Pacific region”.
Although Sullivan did not directly criticize China by name, it is widely believed that the so-called “alternatives outside China” have obvious implications for the “the Belt and Road”.
At present, the specific content of this global infrastructure initiative is not known, but it is worth mentioning that this is not the first time Biden wants to pull the G7 countries to carry out infrastructure initiatives against China’s “the Belt and Road”. On June 13, 2021, at the G7 summit held in Britain, the leaders of the seven countries agreed to launch the “rebuilding a better world” initiative led by the United States to provide low – and middle-income countries with infrastructure construction different from the “the Belt and Road”.
A year later, many projects of the plan are still stranded in the US Senate.
02
Interestingly, while desperately manipulating the “Taiwan” issue and helping to form “small groups” to contain China, the Biden administration once again released the message of “reducing tariffs on China”.
The US News website Axios recently quoted insiders as saying that Biden intends to delete some products from the China tariff list of former president Trump’s government, and will issue relevant announcements as early as this month.
On the 18th local time, Biden said in an interview after riding a bicycle near his beach house in Delaware that “I am in the process of making a decision” about relaxing tariffs on China Earlier in the day, Biden “got stuck by the foot cover” when riding his bicycle and fell down on the spot, but he was not injured.
However, according to recent reports, there are still differences within the Biden administration on whether to adjust tariffs on China:
Finance minister Yellen and Commerce Minister ramondo advocated cutting some tariffs to fight against serious inflation in the United States; Dai Qi, the trade representative, believes that the issue of tariffs on China should be “examined under the great strategy of the United States and China”, and does not support the abolition of the additional tariffs on China.
However, some analysts believe that even if Biden finally makes the decision to relax tariffs on China, it is difficult to take it as an initiative to release goodwill to China.
On the contrary, now that the United States is forced by “the highest inflation in 40 years”, it may not be able to explain to the voters if it does not adjust its tariffs on China.
According to the US Bureau of labor statistics, the US consumer price index (CPI) rose 8.6% year-on-year in May. This is not only the highest since december1981, but also the sixth consecutive month that the US CPI has exceeded 7%.
Among them, housing, gasoline and food prices, which are closely related to people’s lives, rose the most. The energy price index rose 34.6% year-on-year in May, the highest since September 2005; Food prices increased by 10.1% year-on-year, the highest since march1981.
In the words of Biden’s “political enemy”, Senator holly and many other Republican congressmen, the US government “has indeed changed the lives of Americans” and is just “the worst change”:
The new 40 year high inflation rate, the serious shortage of baby milk powder, the soaring oil price of $5 per gallon and the historic wave of crime are all making the lives of the American people “worse”.
Even though the Federal Reserve raised the policy interest rate by 75 basis points on June 15 with the “largest interest rate increase in 30 years”, it still has a “high fever” for inflation. More and more analysts believe that the probability of “stagflation” in the US economy is inevitable, and it is not easy to achieve a “soft landing”.
Affected by inflation, the three major stock indexes of US stocks have plunged one after another recently.
On June 13, the NASDAQ led the decline by 4.68%, the lowest closing since October 2020. The S & P 500 index fell nearly 4%, down more than 21% from its peak in January this year.
The positive sentiment of the Fed’s interest rate hike on the market lasted less than half a trading day. On June 16, the S & P 500 index fell 3.3% and the Dow Jones index fell 2.4%, both reaching the lowest closing level since December 2020.
Recently, a number of US media opinion polls showed that with the continuous rise of inflation and the fear of economic recession, the support rate of US President Biden reached a new low.
A poll conducted jointly by USA Today and Suffolk University shows that 47% of the people strongly disapprove of Biden’s work and 39% of the people approve of his performance. More than 70% of the people believe that the United States is going in the wrong direction.
Obviously, if inflation is not restrained, the Democratic Party is likely to be in danger for Biden in the mid-term elections in November.
Under such circumstances, the abolition of tariffs on China is becoming the best choice for the Biden administration to deal with inflation.
According to the recent research report of Peterson Institute for international economics, if the tariffs are completely abolished, the US CPI can be reduced by 1.3 percentage points, which is equivalent to US $797 for each family.
Even if this expected decline is still “not enough” for current US inflation, even Biden administration officials have to admit that they “have little choice”.
03
Wang Shushen, director of the Taiwan US Relations Research Office of the Taiwan Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that since the outbreak of the Russian Ukrainian conflict on February 24, the issue of Taiwan strait security has been deliberately exaggerated and hyped by the United States and the West. In addition to traditional arms sales, the talks will also discuss issues such as “actual combat training” in an attempt to show that “US Taiwan defense cooperation is becoming closer”.
Since the beginning of this year, the Biden administration has declared that it pursues the “one China policy” and “does not support Taiwan independence”, saying that it will continue to maintain “strategic ambiguity”, but obviously it has not changed the policy of “supporting Taiwan and resisting China” in political, military, economic and other aspects, or even become more clear in strategy.
On the one hand, Taiwan has strengthened its defense capability in military security. In recent years, the DPP authorities have made great efforts to develop “heavy layer deterrence strategy” and “asymmetric combat power” in an attempt to build Taiwan Island into a so-called “porcupine”. The new concept of “enhanced deterrence” is one of the ten major plans of the US “Indo Pacific Action” announced by the Biden administration in the next one to two years, including strengthening military deterrence against China in the Taiwan Strait region and the first island chain.
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine tends to be delayed. The Ukrainian tactics and the US western weapons assistance have further strengthened the illusion of the Taiwan military’s implementation of the “asymmetric” defense concept. The United States continues to normalize its arms sales to Taiwan, preferring to sell a large number of weapons and equipment that are cost-effective and can be used in a small and broad way.
Moreover, the US Congress is also preparing a draft legislation, proposing to treat Taiwan as a “major non NATO ally” and provide Taiwan with billions of dollars in military financing for US military purchases.
As for the US Taiwan “Monterrey talks”, according to the website of the Nikkei Asia magazine, the US side has prepared a list of weapons that it hopes Taiwan will give priority to purchase. Taiwan media said that the US Marine Corps began to adjust its “strategy and tactics in the Indian Pacific region” and positioned it as “stand in forces” to accelerate the formation of the rapid deployment capability of the first island chain. Taiwan may discuss relevant cooperation issues with the US.
On the other hand, we should strengthen our influence and control over Taiwan economically. The United States is the second largest trading partner of Taiwan, and Taiwan is the ninth largest trading partner of the United States. In 2021, the trade volume between Taiwan and the United States was about US $104.8 billion, with a year-on-year increase of more than 26%. However, the trade volume between Taiwan and the mainland exceeded US $320billion, and the trade volume between the two sides accounted for 33% of Taiwan’s foreign trade. The mainland has always been the largest export market and the largest source of trade surplus in Taiwan.
Today, Washington has repeatedly stressed to the relevant parties in Taiwan that “only economic autonomy can maintain political autonomy” and supported Taiwan to reduce its economic dependence on the Chinese Mainland. During the trump period, the implementation of economic security policies severely suppressed and restrained the development of China’s scientific and technological innovation, including the direct use of export controls and long arm jurisdiction to restrict the cooperation between Taiwan’s high-tech industries and the mainland, resulting in TSMC’s stopping providing OEM chips to China.
With regard to the “21st century trade initiative”, the DPP authorities undoubtedly hope to take the opportunity to upgrade the “official relations” with the United States, make up for the lack of being a member of the “India Pacific economic framework”, and even regard the United States as a breakthrough in negotiating and signing more economic and trade agreements with foreign countries.
The Biden administration launched the initiative negotiations with the aim of influencing and controlling the DPP authorities to “be far away from China and close to the United States” in economic and trade policies and rules, guided by the U.S. containment strategy towards China, rather than ceding benefits to Taiwan in terms of substantive economic and trade interests. Therefore, in the economic and trade negotiations, the DPP authorities will be more in a passive position and subject to the strategic needs of the United States, and the island society’s expectation of substantive dividends will eventually fail.
Wang Shushen said that Taiwan is the core and most sensitive issue in China US relations. Since the Biden administration came to power, the Chinese side has clarified to the US side on many occasions its determination and will to firmly safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. The Biden team should feel it.
Subverting Sino US relations and creating direct conflicts are not in line with the current political interests of the Biden administration and the Democratic Party, so its Taiwan policy will still have certain boundaries.
The DPP authorities “Pro us and Anti China” and the United States “pro Taiwan and Anti China” borrow from each other and make use of each other. We should accurately grasp the trend of their strategies, oppose the fake and empty “one China policy”, and strongly counter the escalation of substantive relations between the United States and Taiwan.
Regarding the Biden government’s plan to promote global infrastructure construction projects and hedge the “the Belt and Road” initiative at the G7 summit, an American expert said that the Biden government really wants to take infrastructure construction as a “starting point”, curb China’s global cooperation and expand the economic opportunities of the United States in this regard.
However, over the past period of time, the Biden administration has been more verbal. Although some plans have taken shape, how to really implement them is still a mess, and there is no clue. Now the United States wants to package the “Indo Pacific economic framework” and economic cooperation plans in other regions to form a global infrastructure project, which is actually very difficult.
On the issue of reducing domestic inflation in the United States, Biden did realize that although he was not willing to exempt some Chinese goods from high tariffs, because such a practice would certainly be wildly criticized and criticized by the Republican Party before the mid-term election, there seemed to be no other choice in the Biden administration’s “toolbox”.