/ world today news/ It is clear that the main sensation of the completed trip of the American president to Asia was his unexpected statement: “Yes, this is an obligation we have taken” regarding the military protection of Taiwan by the Americans in the event of a Chinese military operation against it . Even the immediate explanations of various administration officials didn’t help that Joe Biden didn’t say anything new that hadn’t been said before: in the event of a peaceful annexation of Taiwan, America would help him.
These clarifications did not help, as some commentators presciently responded: “It was not enough for this man to drag us into a nuclear war with China”, while others once again reminded: Biden himself has long been ignorant of what he is talking about. Well, there is no need to talk about how Beijing reacts, everything is already clear.
But during his trip to Seoul and Tokyo, Biden made other statements that were less frightening but more interesting. In particular, he promised to catch up and overtake China economically. Literally: for the first time in 40 years, US GDP in 2022 will grow more than China’s. The authors from the Bloomberg agency specified that in fact this will happen for the first time in 46 years, promising a growth of two percent for China and 2.8 for the United States. The reason is Beijing’s persistence in its “zero coronavirus” policy, which shuts down production and clogs supply chains.
This is a great statement for many reasons: First, America has never before made it so clear that it sees China as the benchmark in its enviable race to the top. There have been many estimates of where the US and China will be in the list of the largest economies in ten or twenty years, but to define their country as catching up at the top level – this has not happened.
However, comments followed, including economic ones, with numbers in hand. The fact is that Biden and/or his team relied on data from just one January and extrapolated it to the entire next year. And the data – they are all kinds. For example, in the first three months of the year, China grew by 4.8%, while foreign trade grew by 7.9%. And there are such factors as investment in new projects on Chinese land, which are growing at a frantic pace this year, oil and gas prices for China, for obvious reasons, affordable and predictable, and many others.
But that was the Chinese approach to the matter. There is also an American, or rather opposition approach: the Republicans and their close ideologues. They don’t play with the numbers, they dig deeper, reminding us that the economy is closely related to the state of society as a whole.
For example, in a recent American Tinker article on “They Don’t Take Astronauts”: Our country is becoming a tribal society with collective poverty, rising crime, a destroyed southern border, destroyed constitutional norms, and rampant inflation. We have been moving towards this situation for many decades, and the question now is whether America will exist on July 4, 2026 (259 years of the country) or whether it will be on the verge of collapse by then.
This material is not at all about “catching up and overtaking” some distant China, but about the racial and other hatred between different groups of the population, skillfully cultivated by the Democrats. And here it is hard not to remember that for many years Chinese thinkers, official and not so much, have been trying to abandon the idea of GDP as the only criterion for growth, happiness and good, although China’s GDP continues to grow at a rapid pace all this time. The general welfare of the nation is important. It is clear that there are a lot of purely internal problems in Beijing, and the very dynamic society there is constantly fighting for various reasons, but the Chinese have nothing like what is happening in American society.
In other words, if you want to talk about the competitiveness of nations in their competition with each other, then it’s a very complicated conversation.
But this is exactly the point of Joe Biden’s trip to Asia. The fact is that the project called the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework was finally born in Tokyo.
Now a list of 12 countries ready to enter there has become known. And, as predicted, there China will not enter, but there are countries that, just in case, are simultaneously members of several other economic associations, including those informally led by Beijing, according to the principle “first you have to enter and then see if it comes out something.”
The preliminary conclusions are these: yes, there is a clear focus on the union’s control of an industry in which Beijing is still catching up – semiconductor manufacturing. It is noteworthy, however, that only the general idea of this “economic NATO” was proclaimed in Tokyo, and the specific content of this still needs to be considered, which will make each and every country in several regions: South Asia, East and Southeast. If the initiative turns out to delay their participation in other initiatives and agreements, then complex maneuvers and negotiations for different rules of the game will begin.
Actually, “rules” is the key word here. When Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security aide, was asked in Tokyo why the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework was being created, he replied: so that the participants could “work closely with the United States on rules and standards, for greater transparency and coordination of supply chains, for innovation ” And smart people reminded that many of these rules will also require the approval of Congress. In general, confusion and hesitation in this new economic formation will begin when the principle “which is not with us, he is against us”.
As for the general idea of catching up and overtaking China, then it will be interesting to see whether through the efforts of the “empire of lies” it will become yet another castle in the air, whence the usual cries of “Look, we beat them one more time.”
Maybe someone will believe it.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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