by Pepe Escobar for Sputnik
Let’s start by examining what the Dragon himself – President Xi Jinping – has to say about China being largely derided in influential Beltway circles as a House of Cards.
Xi has forcefully dismissed the notion that a House of Cards power struggle has been raging at the rarified heights of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Yet at the same time he’s adamant; “conspirators”, “careerists”, “cabals” and “cliques” are attempting to undermine the CCP from within.
Thus, with ironic/poetic justice, a 42-part series on corruption in China – titled In the Name of the People and financed by the Middle Kingdom’s top law enforcement agency – is bound to go live before the end of 2016, featuring a CCP stalwart as the bad guy (that’s a first). Call him the Chinese Frank Underwood.
This means that what Xi is saying – and acting — live will be mirrored on hundreds of millions of Chinese screens, pitting conflicting factions within the 88 million-member CCP. Xi’s war on corruption has produced a rash of severely disgruntled CCP officials – to put it mildly.
Xi not only is the Commander-in-Chief in the fight against corruption; he’s now Commander-in-Chief of China’s joint battle command center as well. He monitors a [Central Military Commission] Chairman Responsibility System as well as the central guard corps, which monitors the security of all other CCP heavyweights.Add to these Xi’s status as CCP’s general secretary, chairman of the Central Military Commission, president of the national security commission and head of the top group for reform of the Chinese system, and a Harvard academic who refers to him as “the chairman of everything” does not seem to be that far off the mark.
Yet even this awesome concentration of power does not mean that Xi is an unassailable deity. On the key drama – the state of the economy – it has emerged that in a recent interview by the People’s Daily with an anonymous “authoritative person”, printed on the front page and exposing deep economic divergence among the CCP leadership, the “authoritative person” in question was none other than Xi.
He had to take to the key media read by anyone who’s anyone in China to press his point on how to fix China’s debt-ridden economy; low growth is OK, and the new normal; as for blind credit expansion/monetary easing, that’s not OK. Xi, once again, is adamant; it’s now or never to start a painful restructuring of the Chinese system.
Beware the “nests of foreign spies”
Xi Jinping does wield astonishing power. There can’t be any other way. Imagine the man on top of a civilization-state of 5,000 years who needs, among myriad other crucial issues, to; tweak/manage an economic system that was successful for over 30 years but now needs to be upgraded; shift the system from export-led demand to domestic consumption; manage the aspirations – and broken dreams – of a vast working class including millions of newly unemployed; reorganize monster state-owned enterprises (SOEs); find ways to get rid of Himalayas of bad bank loans and “nonperforming” investments; downsize and at the same time vitally upgrade the Chinese military.
And if that was not enough, Beijing has to be fully alert 24/7 about all those non-stop Pentagon provocations – actual and rhetorical – centered in the South China Sea.
You’ve got to be alert. Full time. All the time. And be alert at “foreign hostile forces” or, more plainly, “nests of foreign spies” who want you to be mired in chaos. Thus the new law on NGOs operating in China. There are too many — over 7,000. And the (hidden) agenda for quite a few – from NED to the Soros gang — is to try to promote pure, unadulterated color revolution, as difficult as that may be in ultra-regimented China.Yet it worked in Brazil – a BRICS weak link. The CCP leadership has carefully – and silently – understood the Brazilian lesson, and is fully aware that Exceptionalistan would stop at nothing to slow down China’s already spectacular global reach. So if you’re a NGO operating in China, from now on you need to find an official Chinese sponsor and register with local police.
Back to the Chinese economy, the mantra across multiple, powerful Beltway factions is that a crash is imminent. Once again; the House of Cards theme.
China’s total debt is now a whopping 280% of GDP. That includes the 115% that apply to SOEs’ debts; in Japan, for instance, that SOE figure is only 31%. Yet what really matters is that only a maximum of 25% of Chinese SOEs’ debts will need to be restructured.
Xi’s strategy is that the Goddess of the Market will turbo-charge those SOEs, not kill them. So forget about the CPP handing out control of the Chinese economy to companies that the CCP itself does not control. No wonder what’s left for US Big Capital’s spokespersons is to carp about a House of Cards.
All eyes on 2021
It’s never enough to remind everyone that absolutely everything that’s happening in China now is subordinated to Xi’s official target of achieving “a moderately prosperous society” (xiaokang shehui) by the 100th anniversary of the CCP’s founding, in 2021.
That’s a mere five years from now. More long term, 2049, is the target of achieving a “socialist modernized society” (shehuizhuyi xiandaihua shehui) with a $30,000 GDP per capita; that should tie in with the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Beijing’s army of planners estimate that this overwhelming target is achievable if the Middle Kingdom is able to produce over 30% of global GDP by 2049; for comparison, that’s about 1 and ½ times more than the proportion currently produced by the US (and considering that the US does not manufacture much apart from weapons and infotech.)As breathtaking as this vision may be, it’s always reduced by the same old catastrophist Western “experts” to variations of Xi being the new Mao Zedong. That’s so pedestrian. The men – and the historical contexts – are radically diverse. Mao decided on a few core issues by himself – and left the rest to his underlings. The Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping was a man of consensus. Xi decides by himself on virtually everything – but he does pay attention to some selected advisers. Examples include the Ministry of Trade, which first came up with the concept that developed into the New Silk Roads, and Liu He, the advisor who conceptualized Xi’s current economic strategy.
The fact that Xi is now designated as the “core” (hexin) of the Beijing leadership is not such a big (Maoist) deal. The word in Beijing is that an assembly line of editors is now compiling a book of Xi thought (sixiang) that would make him as crucial as Mao as a contributor to Sino-Marxist theory. So what? Xi is a man in a rush, on a roll and with a mission – and 2021 is just around the corner. House of Cards? No; this looks more like a case of Xi landing a Full House on the table.
Brilliant, and what I thought was Xi’s way of leading his deeply loved land. Here is where he and Putin mirror one another. Their finest treasures are their people.
Very unusual in the post WW11 West as the respected USA went into a frantic war mode as if war was to become the new peace. Which in fact, is what has happened, with the twist that Europe wage the big US world wars and that the lost, desperate young muslim men from EU NATO wars of conquest in the form of Turkish, Saudi supported ISAS be-header warriors, keep Europe in obedient line. Drones added.
Barosso of the EU Commission ordered 30,000 EU drones be built. No laws yet control their use. Washington and the Pentagon love them. So will ISIS.
Well put and I will add, Russia and China must share all they have, oil, money, food, railways, culture. Become the World Island they were meant to be. The Western Mob will always try to pry them apart, pit them against each other, balkanize them. We’ve all seen it. It’s unmistakable. If they succeed we’re all done for.
The Americans specialize in projecting their own problems or pathologies onto their opponents. That is what this “House of Cards” meme is about, and why the USA is so insistently pushing it.
The irony is that “house of cards” is the real name of America’s Wall Street Ponzi scheme economy and Fiat Dollar scam, which are ripe to go supernova in a manner that may supercede the USA’s 2008 Wall Street financial implosion.
Indeed, America’s fear of a Katrina-style “hurricane” hitting its financial system is the underlying driver of the USA’s surge in waging wars of aggression, bombing other nations, and fomenting regime change/color coup d’etats around the world–and not the putative rationalizations like fighting terrorism, Weapons of Mass Detruction, or (snicker) promoting freedom and democracy and the rule of law.
Simply put, America is desperate to prop up its unipolar world order through force and subversion, even as its financial system is collapsing from its own weight.
How can China’s debt be 280 % of GDP? The economy has grown enormously and has run a trade surplus for decades. It’s confusing because googling around on this topic doesn’t seem to clarify anything – some sources say it’s 65%, others 240% – though this is the only article I can find that says 280%. If it is really that high, then it sounds pretty terrible.
Great article as always by Mr. Escobar. A crucial question though: is the Chinese export-based economy divorced enough from the US/west that it could withstand a western economic collapse or freezing out from western markets? My sense is that’s where they want to go (a domestic demand-driven economy) but are not there yet, which leaves them exposed to western shenanigans.
China’s current policies are a very, very “mixed bag”, to say the least. Contrast (!) what these two articles by F. William Engdahl report:
***
China Quietly Prepares Golden Alternative to Dollar System
http://journal-neo.org/2016/05/18/china-quietly-prepares-golden-alternative-to-dollar-system/
18 May 2016
“… China, as current chair of the G-20 group of nations, called on France to organize a very special conference in Paris. The fact such a conference would even take place in an OECD country is a sign of how weakened the hegemony of the US-dominated Dollar System has become. … …”
***
China Plans to become GMO Giant
http://journal-neo.org/2016/05/08/china-plans-to-become-gmo-giant/
8 May 2016
“… At the very highest levels it is now clear that the Chinese regime of President Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, who is also head of the State Council, have decided to make China a world leader in the highly controversial field of Genetically Manipulated Organisms or GMO and the related highly toxic (to humans) pesticides and herbicides. This was made clear in November when the Chinese state ChemChina announced it was seeking to buy the Anglo-Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Syngenta of Basel. This is for me a personal disappointment and for the world, a major blow. … …”
(And this at the time when Putin finally managed to ban the GMO horror in Russia.)
***
Can we hope that Putin will influence Xito listen to his(Putin’s)biologists regarding the scourge of GMOs. Such a course would destroy China’s future and health.
China was the first country to grow GMOs commercially, in 1988. The Chinese people are resistant to GMOs. Article written by two Chinese: https://chinaperspectives.revues.org/359
This is from the US-China joint fact sheet . . There’s a bunch of fact sheets at the link below. I don’t have the time to get to it right now; hope one of you does.
“AGRICULTURAL BIOTECHNOLOGY”
[GMOs, no? Safety is not mentioned]
“China and the United States reaffirm the outcome reached on agricultural innovation in September 2015 at the state visit of President Xi with President Obama. China and the United States have fully exchanged views about agricultural innovation at the JCCT and the Strategic Agricultural Innovation Dialogue; will jointly promote the cooperation on agricultural innovation; and create a favorable environment for agricultural innovation. Both sides reaffirmed they would work together to further the approval process based on international standards; and reiterated the importance of adopting a timely, transparent, predictable and science-based approval process.
China and the United States jointly agreed to strengthen policy and information exchange, share the experiences and practices on research and development, supervision and approval; consider domestic and international stakeholders’ comments when modifying and improving regulations”
https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/fact-sheets/2015/December/US-China-Joint-Fact-Sheet-26th-JCCT
Addition:
The thing which is most of all causing cancer are (or may be) not the GMO’s themselves, but the pesticides the GMO crops need to survive, most notably Monsanto’s “Round-Up” Glyphosat.
While the GMO industry often praises the wildest positive things about GMO crops (such as resistant to weeds, bigger harvest etc.), the reality is that tose alleged “benefits” can only be achived not by the GMO crprs themselves, but by the highly toxic cancer-causing pesticides. The only thing in which GMO crops are “superior” to normal crops is, that they don’t immediately die themselves from such high doses of highly toxic Glyphosat.
If you grow genetically modified crops without throwing 100s of tons of toxic pesticides on to them, the liklihood that GMO crops are not unhealthy would increase exponentially. Then however – GMO crops die much fatser than normal crops, because they have much less built-in “natural” resistance against weeds themselves.
Another point: the GMO industry intentionally removed the ability of those crops to reproduce themselves. So the peasants have to buy them every year at overpriced prices from the industry, rather than being able to take semen from the old harvest.
(certainly no the) last point: The GMO crops may increase the harvest during the first few years, but they explit and destroy the soil. After 5 to 10 years the soil is exhausted and you cannot grow any crops at all anymore.
That’s why so many bank loan slaves peasants in s/e asia are committing suicide when they find out that they can no longer nurish their families.
All very sad, and should be forbidden for all times.
But the GMO dirt has already leacked into the wild. Too late.
Well – we still have unpolluted crops semen in the WW3-safe bunkers on Svalbard. What a relief.
Pepe Escobar and The Saker…
My name is Tony – I come from oldham, lancashire england
Can we meet – anywhere you like in the world – and Learn To Fly (I bet both you guys can already do it – I know the Saker can Dive)
I learnt to fly when I was about 23 years old..it involves an enormous amount of self discipline..an enormous amount of concentration..if you are under the influence of any drugs whatsoever ..you will not even get in the queue let alone go solo.. I learnt to fly gliders..
Real Gliders like Sir Derek Piggott – after Derby & Lancs (Great Hucklow) taught me To fly (I went to Lasham the next week on my motorbike -well on The Sunday a day later,,))
The Best Flight Instructor in The World – He not only taught me to Fly..he took me to the complete limit..like even him and me were thinking…we were so close to the trees and we were so far out..you see Derek Piggott Trusted me ..he taught me to fly..and I knew he could get us safely back..and he knew I wouldn’t panic and grab the controls…the joystick in the front and kill us both…
He taught me in a Motor Glider too where he just cut the power simulating everything that in experience could possibly happen in a glider without an engine..and how to survive…
We are both still ALIVE – and He is 93
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Piggott#/media/File:Derek_Piggott.JPG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derek_Piggott
100 Easy
I found power flying completely boring after my training.
Tony
So far as I can tell Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis born in 1935 is still alive and still a dairy farmer..I would like to suggest he collects an enormous amount of bullshiit and tents and pegs after this years 2016 Glastonbury Festival and Hires a Very Old Russian Airplane..that I have actually seen take off in Cuba (Twice – even I was on second One) after My Wife had Dived from 10,000 feet (my 12 year old son kept going zoom…splat..and my daughter was so proud of her mum – landing on the beach in Varadero – all smiles on her face)…
And Dumps All The Shiit On New York and Washington From Above
The American’s Air Defenses Do Not Detect Us British in Cuban Airplanes
They Think Us British are Working For Them
We Ain’t
Even The Canadians Do Not Like Americans
Don’t You Americans See This as a Bit Of a Problem???
When almost The Entire World Hates You..Including even Us British….Your Closest Friends??
We Don’t Like You..
Geddit??
Tony
The CCP may pay lip service to dreams of a socialist modernized society with per capita GDP at US$30,000 by 2049, but anyone who examines their actions, tactics, and strategies would have to conclude that these dreams will only extend to 3 – 400,000,000 of their total population, namely the more educated residents of cities and industrial areas. The bulk of the population, approximately 1 billion people, will remain in near subsistence farming, with some increase in income and living standards, but nothing near the gains made by the rest of the nation.
Hi, maybe I should repost a link that I already sent twice this year:
Deal With the Devil: How the Global Elite Re-colonized China
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFQhVAwbB6o
From my own 2 visits I can say that:
* they do have a large quite wealthy middle class, driving brand new BMW, Mercedes, whatever brands SUV-s, are wearing good clean expensive clothes.
* public places such as train stations are polished, ultra-modern, 10000% clean, with always enough security and service personnel
* you hardly find any signs of communism
* poverty is less visible on the streets than in many western countries
So maybe the situation for average people is not all that bad as depicted in the video above. On the other side those working in such exploitation factories 60 hours a week at 2$ per hours – those are not the ones which one would see in long distance trains anyway. Anyway not in the sleeper’s coach, but in the dramatically overcrowded cold windy noisy unhealthy seater’s car. And _thhere_ _is_ poverty, lots of it.
So after all, the video is true.
And I’m quite desillusioned about China. It really has nothing to do with Communism anymore. The only thing which they still kept intact: A Soviet style security and military apparatus. Although on the other hand people are very free and can move, travel or do what they want. So – definitely still a 1000 times better than the West, but no communism at all anymore, unfortunately.
It was sold out by traitors for personal greed, just as the Soviet Union.
It’s now a neo-feudal Oligarchy, just like most countries. Of course there are infights then.
All the rest (Gold and Dollar-Alternative or whatever ramblings) are less relevant, because China’s ruling class is playing in the same casino as Wall Street. And they have their reserves and investments all over the world. Unlikely they want to risk losing their own money.
That’s why I have less hope about them or Russia bringing the Dollar empire to fall.
Sad.
It’s not just the money invested in American dollars the elite aren’t ready to lose. I don’t think the Oligarchs want to risk losing access to American medicine. Germany and other countries are very good but American medicine requires substantial infrastructure. I suspect the two tiered system will be slowly introduced and they can’t afford to collapse it all right now until that’s done. Stents, LVADS, embolectomies, Bone Marrow transplants, chemo, all the cardiac and prostrate meds, RNs, IVs etc require America intact or they can’t get their care.
If they were smart they would not desire to make such toxic therapies that you mentioned. To heal Cancer a chemo is the worst one can do.
Right, you need a lot of money for that, as the healthcaresystem in USA is made for oligarchs, so-called Obamacare is an abject failure.
I know; let’s all call ourselves anonymous, what fun! Nobody can even vaguely sort out ideas or threads, so constructive.
@Pepe, I love your writings. Today there was a ‘buzzing’ of Chinese warplanes in the South Cina seas, dubbed as “unsafe” and having taken place in international waters. TIme for Russia and China to stand up, stop talking, action is needed.
Ironically, the so-called gold-backed currency is a detriment to China itself. How would she finance all these Silk road initiates outside of a debt fueled construction?
It’s really about carving spheres of influence. The TTP is a play to make non-BRICS under a formal US-led agreement. The silk road / anti-dollar initiative the same things.
Unfortunately for the BRICS, the US-dollar cabal elite are like a python around the BRICS. The harder they squirm under a system they don’t control, the more they expend their resources inefficiently. Only Russia has mastered the ability to make the enemy work harder than you as it performs defensive actions.
The US today started the hot phase of the (at this time still) economic WW3:
China Furious After US Launches Trade War “Nuke” With 522% Duty
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-19/china-furious-after-us-launches-trade-war-nuke-522-duty
In Salem it was “witchcraft” and in China it’s “corruption.” The object of both: to cloak the struggle for power, and its causes.
Those who struggle against the present power structure of China object to the economic system of the West, called “neoliberalism”, through which countries are bled of their sovereignty. Democracy is meaningless where the voter’s govt has no say in currency/credit management. Under neoliberalism individual countries may not design trade policy to protect infant industries nor those they regard as necessary, such as food for their own citizens. “Free trade” always results in the deindustrialization of all but the most developed countries, as has happened to all the southern countries within the EU. Free trade gives absolute power to the capitalist, forcing the laborers of each country to compete against each other for the benefit of totally mobile capital, which is unrestrained in its acquisition of the best assets.
The present Chinese govt is oligarchic and embraces enthusiastically both neoliberalism and the global oligarchy which is taking form today through the strengthening of international institutions which take over the functions of sovereign nations.
From a 2014 speech by Zhon Shang, China Internatl Trade Minister & Vice Minister of Commerce:
“we will actively promote the negotiations on international investment rules. As global cross-border investment continues to grow, countries around the world should work together to build uniform multilateral investment rules, improve the investment environment, break down unreasonable barriers to investment, increase market access, protect the legitimate rights and interests of investors, and mitigate unnecessary investment risks, and provide an institutional guarantee for cross-border investment development”
“we will actively participate in negotiations relating to global economic governance. The 2008 global financial crisis has called for greater global economic governance. Over the past five years, new progress has been achieved with the multilateral trading system, the G20 Group and regional economic cooperation. Rules governing trade in goods, trade in services, international finance”
“We hope that relevant countries can adopt an inclusive and rational attitude towards the legitimate outward investment by Chinese companies, abandon all forms of protectionism in trade and investment, and create a fair and relaxed social and public opinion environment.”
“Mr. Martin Sorrell, Chief Executive Officer of WPP Group: how do you see the relationship between state-owned enterprises and the opening-up?
A: As a matter of fact, China’s SOE reform has being on going for more than twenty years, as the number of state-owned enterprises, especially those at local levels, has decreased remarkably owing to continued restructuring. In recent years, China’s SOE reform has intensified while participation by foreign investment enterprises in the reform process has also increased. For example, many of the financial institutions and banks formerly 100% owned by the state have now either gone public with diversified equity ownerships, or had many foreign shareholders. In addition, large-scaled reforms were carried out in some SOEs in the oil and telecommunications sectors.”
http://zhongshan2.mofcom.gov.cn/article/speeches/201404/20140400536355.shtml