Global Research, August 05, 2020
US war on China’s rising prominence on the world stage is a bipartisan affair.
It won’t likely miss a beat if Biden succeeds Trump in January.
US hostility toward China by Republicans and Dems differs only or largely in style and public rhetoric.
Washington considers China a strategic threat because of its growing political, economic, industrial, technological and military prominence — challenging US dominance and hegemonic aims.
They’re all about wanting control of planet earth, its resources and populations, co-opting other nations as client states to serve its interests, even at the expense of their own sovereign rights.
China is heading toward overtaking the US as the world’s leading economy.
Its growing prominence comes at a time when the US is declining.
Its endless post-9/11 wars on invented enemies to maintain its global dominance have been counterproductive.
From unchallenged preeminence on the world stage following the defeat of Nazi Germany, imperial Japan, and fascist Italy in WW II, US war on humanity transformed itself into a pariah state, an unparalleled global menace to be feared, not respected.
Its war on China by other means is doomed to fail.
Does its growing hostility toward Beijing risk direct confrontation?
What’s unthinkable is possible. Two global wars taught the US nothing.
A belligerent state throughout its history from inception, it remains militantly unchanged in the nuclear age.
A key part of its war on China by other means are actions to give corporate America a leg up on its enterprises, its tactics featuring dirty tricks.
What’s going on makes reconciling major bilateral differences all the harder, likely impossible as long as US hegemonic aims remain unchanged.
According to the US Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), over 150 tech-related Chinese enterprises have been blacklisted from the US market, including 11 last month added to its so-called “Entity List.”
On July 20, a BIS statement falsely accused the newly blacklisted firms of “human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of the People’s Republic of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labor, involuntary collection of biometric data, and genetic analyses targeted at Muslim minority groups from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (sic).”
No evidence was cited to corroborate the accusation because none exists.
China’s TikTop video-sharing platform and its WeChat mobile text and voice messaging communication service are the Trump regime’s latest targets.
According to China Daily, what’s going on against TikTok is a US “smash and grab” operation.
After blacklisting the firm, Pompeo on Sunday said the Trump regime “will take action in the coming days with respect to a broad array of national security risks that are presented by software connected to the Chinese Communist Party (sic).”
China Daily slammed hostile Trump regime actions against the firm and other Chinese companies, saying they’re being misrepresented as a “Red threat” to the US.
Inviting Microsoft or another US firm to negotiate with TikTok’s management on buying the company amounts to the Trump regime’s “sanctioned (theft) of Chinese technology,” adding:
Beijing “will by no means accept the ‘theft’ of a Chinese technology company, and it has plenty of ways to respond if the (Trump regime) carries out its planned smash and grab.”
Separately, China Daily called what’s going on against TikTok an attempt to arrange a “mafia” deal, making an offer its parent company ByteDance can’t refuse.
Trump gave Microsoft (or another US corporate buyer) until September 15 to make a deal or TikTok will be banned from operating in the US.
Cato Institute senior fellow Julian Sanchez slammed what’s going on, calling Trump’s action an “extortion threat” based on a “mafia business model,” adding:
It’s worsened by wanting the US Treasury to get a cut of the purchase price, making the transaction, if consummated, “even more grotesque and shameless…”
“As with his (unacceptable) tariff policy, there doesn’t seem to be any consideration of whether this sets a dangerous precedent for other countries to engage in similar pretextual protectionism against us, or how whimsically compelling divestment might affect international investment.”
Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center senior fellow Samm Sacks warned that what’s going on with TikTok will set “a dangerous precedent in which the US government can blacklist companies based on country of origin using blanket national security as justification.”
Claiming the company shares user data with China’s government is unsupported by evidence.
It’s part of US war on China by other means.
With hundreds of millions of users worldwide, about 100 million in the US, TikTok is a major Facebook (FB) competitor.
Marginalizing or banning TikTok in the US would benefit FB greatly.
Its CEO Mark Zuckerberg echoed Trump regime disinformation about TikTok, falsely claiming it’s connected to China’s government.
According to Samm Sacks, “TikTok is one of the most important competitors in the US to Facebook, and more competition is a good thing at a moment when the concentration of power in the hands of US tech platforms is under scrutiny.”
Separately on Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Beijing strongly opposes US actions against Chinese software or other tech firms over invented national security concerns, adding:
“The US generalizes the concept of national security and, without any evidence, makes presumptions of guilt and threats against relevant companies.”
“This violates the principles of market economy and exposes the hypocrisy and typical double standards of the US in maintaining fairness and freedom. It also violates the World Trade Organization’s principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination.”
China’s UK envoy Liu Xiaoming accused the US of “politiciz(ing) economic issues and abus(ing) the concept of national security to pursue discriminatory and exclusive policies.”
US war on targeted Chinese tech companies endangers them all.
If the Trump regime gets away with forcing the sale of TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft or another US firm, who’s next on Washington’s target list!
It’s gone all-out to blacklist Huawei in the West and elsewhere.
Is that a future US shoe to drop against all of China’s most successful tech companies?
A Final Comment
On Tuesday, China’s Xinhua said intense China bashing by Pompeo and other Trump regime Chinaphobes comes at a time of DJT’s troubled reelection campaign.
Given his own presidential ambitions, “Pompeo also sees an opportunity to promote his (aims) by attacking China with outright lies” — using tough talk in hopes of boosting his popularity among other US Chinaphobes.
He’s using “his (State Department) office (as a) launchpad for” a 2024 presidential campaign.
The Sino/US relationship is the world’s most important one, why engagement is how to manage it.
Note: On Monday, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance said it may shift the subsidiary firm’s headquarters outside the US.
Its president Zhang Yiming indicated that “preliminary discussions” began with an unnamed US firm to continue operating in the country.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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Copyright © Stephen Lendman, Global Research, 2020
https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-war-chinese-enterprises/5720282
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