Chinas Crucial Role as America’s Creditor
By Prof. James Petras
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17994
Global Research, March 8, 2010
The Obama Administration has heightened tensions with China through a series of measures which can only be characterized as major provocations designed to undermine relations between the two countries. These provocations include political support for separatist movements, such as the US-funded theocratic-monk led Tibetan secessionists and the Washington-based Uyghur secessionists, as well as through the $6.4 billion-dollar advanced arms sales to Taiwan, a virtual protectorate of the US Navy. President Obama has publicly met with and openly backed these separatist and secessionists groups, flaunting Washingtons refusal to recognize Chinas existing borders. This is part of the US strategy of encouraging the physical break-up of independent nations, which are viewed as obstacles to its program of global military empire building.
In addition to continuing and escalating the hostile policies of his predecessor, the Obama Administration has exploited several other issues in order to rally American public opinion and mobilize overseas allies behind its confrontational posture. First, the Obama Administration claims that Chinas currency (the Renminbi) is artificially undervalued to give Chinese exports an unfair price advantage, thus undercutting US manufacturing exports and costing millions of American jobs. And secondly, the Administration claims that, after the US had opened its domestic manufacturing market to Chinese firms, the Chinese would not reciprocate and open their financial sectors to Wall Street investment banks.
In retaliation for growing Chinese exports, Washington has raised protective tariffs on steel pipes and automobile tires, and issued Congressional threats of further protectionist measures.
The US has insists that other nations support its aggressive policy toward Iran, including imposing trade, investment and financial sanctions, supporting the provocative US naval build-up in the Persian Gulf and backing Israels bellicose threats to bomb Teheran. In contrast, China rejects economic sanctions, in favor of negotiations, while increasing its trade and investments in strategic sectors of the Iranian economy. In the United Nations Security Council, the US has exerted diplomatic and mass media pressure to force China to vote for a Zionist-authored proposal of wide-reaching sanctions against Iran. Obama refuses to accept Chinas rejection of the US military-driven policy of regime change and the Chinese pursuit of free trade with Iran.
The US Administrations selective definition of self-determination includes giving support to secessionist ethno-religious regional movements in China, while, at the same time, invading and occupying independent states, like Iraq and Afghanistan, ordering missile attacks on other states, like Pakistan and Somalia, establishing over 700 military bases world-wide with extra-territorial jurisdiction and engaging in assassinations of its opponents abroad via the CIA and Special Forces.
In contrast, China is not at war and opposes military invasions of sovereign states. China does not have overseas military bases and is menaced by the US policy of encircling Chinas frontiers with American bases in client states in Northeast, Southeast and Central Asia.
While US military occupation forces brutally violate human rights of millions of citizens in occupied or targeted countries, and threaten the civil rights of critical Americans with arbitrary rulings, secret trials and the suspension of habeas corpus, the Obama regime excoriates China for its prosecution of opposition activists.
The Obama regime has latched onto a conflict between a private US corporation, Google, and Chinese hackers, which it alleges are state sponsored, turning the issue into a major struggle for internet freedom at the level of state to state relations. Despite the expanding presence of scores of US-owned IT companies in China, the Obama regime has raised the issue of internet censorship to the level of a major ideological confrontation.
Climate change is another source of aggravation between the states. At the Copenhagen summit in December 2009, Obama rejected any formal agreement on the reduction of carbon emissions while deflecting criticism and blame on to China and other developing countries, which had agreed to informal substantive targets on CO2 reductions.
Of all these points of contention, the most serious is Washingtons financial, diplomatic and political support for ethnic secessionist groups in China, threatening the security and territorial integrity of the Chinese state. This paramount issue has re-awakened painful memories of earlier imperialist carving up of China, its rich port cities and territories and has forced the Chinese authorities to consider retaliatory measures.
Imperial Policies: At What Price?
The Obama regimes political and diplomatic provocations against China in pursuit of its military-driven empire, come at a very high real and potential price. We cannot assume that China will remain a stoic punching bag for the US, absorbing territorial threats, economic pressures and gratuitous diplomatic insults without taking counter-measures especially in the economic sphere.
