Source: wechat official account: Bu Yidao has been authorized to reprint
Write / pigeon talk & Tiger knife
“We have no time”.
The anxiety of racing against time is now spreading on Capitol Hill.
Lawmakers tried their best to pass more bills to “compete” with China before the adjournment of the Congress on August 4.
From the “American innovation and competition act”, which is known as the “general script of strategic competition with China”, to squeezing out a $52billion chip bill “emergency”, to the house of Representatives’ adoption of a record military budget of more than $800billion to deal with the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the “Sino Russian threat”
The air was filled with an atmosphere of “irreparable damage to the U.S. economy and military if it cannot be completed”.
For identified “opponents”, the United States is used to showing its hysterical “ferocity”.
But the question is, can the current strength of the United States support the so-called “ambition”?
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At present, the “American innovation and competition act” is the most concerned and played up on Capitol Hill.
This bill aims to enhance the competitiveness of the United States in key technologies, industries and other fields. Because of its clear “competition” direction, wide range of fields involved, and many planned grants, it can be described as the first of all kinds of China related bills in recent years, and was once known as the “general script of strategic competition with China”.
However, due to the serious infighting between Democrats and Republicans, this bill, which has been entangled in Congress for more than a year, is still in the “childbirth” stage, and the relevant negotiations have been deadlocked.
In order to break the deadlock, Senate majority leader and Democratic Senator Schumer made the latest statement, saying that he planned to hold a preliminary vote on the “slimming down version” of the China competition bill as early as next Tuesday. People familiar with the matter said that the “slimming down version” of the bill will include at least $52billion in incentives and investment tax credits for the U.S. semiconductor manufacturing industry.
Privately, according to US media reports, in his meeting with senior officials of the trump administration, he pushed for radical measures, including whether to kidnap Assange from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
It was revealed that the White House and the highest level of the CIA even discussed the possibility of his assassination.
Pompeo later admitted that “some parts of these statements are true”.
In June this year, the British government approved the extradition of Assange to the United States. If Assange is extradited to the United States, he may face up to 175 years in prison. “WikiLeaks” editor in chief helfson said that the British court’s decision “is equivalent to Assange’s death sentence”.
In fact, Washington’s relentless attacks on Assange and WikiLeaks only stem from their actions, which have uncovered the tip of the iceberg that the United States is rampant in global cyberspace.
Assange once said that the United States is a “listening superpower”. From the “telescreen action” and “quantum” cyber attack weapons of the national security agency of the United States to the special “honeycomb” malicious code attack control weapon platform of the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States, technically speaking, the existing backbone network equipment of the international Internet and important information infrastructure around the world, as long as they include the hardware, operating system and application software provided by the American Internet company, It may become the target of US intelligence agencies to attack and steal secrets.
Now China is one of the most frequent targets of cyber attacks launched by the United States. The CIA is currently considering the proposal to establish an independent “China Mission Center”. U.S. director of national intelligence Haynes once said that “the annual threat assessment of the U.S. intelligence community lists key threat countries, of which China ranks first, and China remains the priority target of the intelligence community.”
In addition, Washington also made a mischief, slandering China for “stealing” Western intelligence and technology to gain competitive advantage. In early July, the heads of us and British intelligence agencies delivered a rare joint speech in London, with the theme of warning against the challenge of “changing the rules of the game” from China.
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From military to politics, and then to cyberspace, the United States’ attack and containment against China is being carried out in an all-round way.
Some analysts said that the two houses of Congress will enter the traditional vacation or constituency service period in August, and although there are still several weeks of meetings in September and October, it will enter the white hot stage before the mid-term elections at that time, and there is almost no room for negotiation to finalize the bill. Therefore, the next three weeks will be the last golden window for the Biden administration to promote legislation according to its own wishes.
Although the China competition act is controversial and widely divergent between the two sessions, Lu Xiang, an expert on American issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that in general, the United States’ attitude towards competition with China will not change. The problem is that the current strength of the United States may not be enough to support their “ambitions”.
Lu Xiang believes that the current political chaos in the United States is beyond imagination, which will directly affect the domestic strength construction of the United States. The United States has always stressed that the key to competing with China is to build the United States well. A slogan put forward by the Biden administration is to build a better United States and strengthen its competitive strength.
However, in reality, the GDP of the United States shrank by 1.5% in the first quarter, and the growth rate of the second quarter will be announced at the end of this month. Now it is predicted that the GDP growth rate of the second quarter is still likely to be negative. If there are two consecutive quarters of negative growth, according to a relatively simple definition, it means that the U.S. economy will enter a recession, so the U.S. economy will face a very difficult situation in the second half of the year.
The only data that the U.S. economy can boast now is the low unemployment rate, but this data is also deceptive. The problem with the U.S. economy is not the unemployment rate, but a large number of vacant jobs. According to statistics, there are more than 11 million jobs left unattended in the United States, which is also one of the important reasons for the disruption of the supply chain.
Lu Xiang said that before the mid-term elections, many polls showed that the first thing ordinary Americans care about most is the economy, the second is the economy, and the third is the economy.
But the political elite in Washington has embarked on a path that runs counter to the ordinary people. At a time when people are most concerned about how to build the country well, elites believe that paying too much attention to domestic affairs will distract attention from China. The fact that Congress has passed a series of China related bills also reflects this mentality.
Lu Xiang believes that the problem is that the current difficulties facing the United States have nothing to do with China.
The confrontation theory of “great power politics” represented by Mearsheimer in the United States has shaped the general mentality of American politicians. According to this theory, the United States cannot let China become another “regional overlord” under any circumstances.
This “China phobia” is not only completely unhealthy, which is harmful to the common development of all countries in the world in the existing order, but also makes the U.S. leaders indulge in the waves of the vast Pacific Ocean, but turn a blind eye to the current domestic chaos, so that they simply cannot correctly view and solve the difficulties and tears encountered at home, which will eventually lead the United States to decline.
Based on its strength stock, the United States can certainly create more or less trouble for China, but as long as China adheres to a stable and people-centered development path, the United States cannot curb the general trend of China’s development.
As for the so-called competition act against China launched by the United States, Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of foreign affairs, has previously said that the content related to China in the act is full of cold war thinking and zero sum concept, slanders China’s development path and domestic and foreign policies, advocates strategic competition with China, and gives advice on issues related to Taiwan, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Tibet and so on. China firmly opposes this.
Zhao Lijian stressed that the United States should abandon the Cold War mentality and the zero sum concept, treat China and China US relations objectively and rationally, delete the negative content related to China in the bill, stop reviewing and promoting the bill, and stop harming China US relations and cooperation between the two sides in important fields.