China

"(On Britain’s tilt to the Indo-Pacific: ‘Old theme park’) You know, here’s our old friend – what’s his name – the British prime minister waxing lyrical down there in Cornwall. I mean, Britain is like an old theme park sliding into the Atlantic compared to modern China. China is just going to be huge."

"All of this self-serving is driving America and its vassals to war with Russia, which might also mean with China. The war would be nuclear and be the end of the West, an act of self-genocide. The US national security establishment is so crazed that Trump’s efforts to get off the war track and onto a peace track are characterized as treason and a threat to US national security... The Russians are aware that the accusations and demonization that they experience are fabrications. They no longer see the problem as one of misunderstandings that diplomacy can overcome. What they see now is the West preparing its populations for war. It is this perception for which the West is solely responsible that makes the situation today far more dangerous than it ever was during the long Cold War."

"China presents Vietnam with a very big problem. China is taking over Vietnam, from Cholon, where there are rich Chinese, to . They are everywhere now with their product. My wife is from the North, people there resent China more than the South feared the . The Chinese are invaders, like any other foreigners, to fight. We must stop the Chinese. You know the dikes built on the Red River? If they break, what happens? A flood!"

"(On Xi as president for life: ‘A belief in harmony’) Well, it’s a good way to stay in power, I guess. It’s not my way. I actually believe in a community’s right to dismiss the government. But you’ve got to remember that China is broadly a Confucian society that believes in harmony, in authority, and it is with this background that it accepts, I think broadly, the role of the Chinese Communist party. I mean, the idea that we have that if you don’t vote at the local ballot box, that is, if you are not a Jeffersonian liberal, then you are a savage, belies the fact that China has a 4,000-year history which has these characteristics about it."

"China remains the world's largest manufacturer, with four trillion dollars in foreign-exchange reserves, a sum equivalent to the world’s fourth-largest economy... Last spring, China abolished registered-capital and other requirements for new companies, and in November it allowed foreign investors to trade shares directly on the Shanghai stock market for the first time... The risks to China's economy have rarely been more visible. The workforce is aging more quickly than in other countries, because of the one-child policy, and businesses are borrowing money more rapidly than they are earning it... The growth of demand for energy and raw materials has slowed, more houses and malls are empty, and nervous Chinese savers are sending money overseas, to protect it in the event of a crisis... To maintain economic growth, China is straining to promote innovation... After China had spent years investing in science and technology, the share of its economy devoted to research and development surpassed Europe's... The era of Xi Jinping has defied the assumption that China's fitful opening to the world is too critical and productive to stall."

"The big picture in the Middle East isn't Iran or Iraq. The big picture in the Middle East is China. People don't understand that. They don't know what’s going on right now. It's about leveraging control over Middle-Eastern and central-Asian oil, in order to dictate the pace of China's economic growth over the next 30 years. Because China's the biggest threat in the eyes of the neoconservatives. It's this massive Chinese economy that's been expanding by leaps and bounds that’s going to threaten American global economic hegemony. Now I'm not saying this is what I believe, I'm just saying it's what's in the minds of these neoconservatives. You deal with China indirectly at this point in time because you don't want direct confrontation."

"The greatest contribution towards the whole of human race, made by China, to prevent its 1.3 billion people from hunger... There are some foreigners who have eaten their fill and have nothing better to do than point their fingers at our affairs. First, China doesn't export Revolution; second, China doesn't export hunger and poverty; third, China doesn't come and cause you headaches, what more is there to be said?"

"China believes it is the center of the universe. Look at its flag; one big star surrounded by satellite stars. Arrogant!"

"If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there."

"(On rebuilding relationships with Beijing) At least give it respect. What the Chinese want, I think, is respect for what they’ve created. Our central proposition should be that the rise of China is entirely valid. What the Chinese want is acknowledgement of the validity of what they have done and what they have created: the legitimacy of the rise of China from its colonial past and from poverty."

"To understand the changes which now appear upon the Chinese mainland, one must understand the changes in Chinese character and culture over the past 50 years. China, up to 50 years ago, was completely non-homogenous, being compartmented into groups divided against each other. The war-making tendency was almost non-existent, as they still followed the tenets of the Confucian ideal of pacifist culture. At the turn of the century, under the regime of Chang Tso Lin, efforts toward greater homogeneity produced the start of a nationalist urge. This was further and more successfully developed under the leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek, but has been brought to its greatest fruition under the present regime to the point that it has now taken on the character of a united nationalism of increasingly dominant, aggressive tendencies. Through these past 50 years the Chinese people have thus become militarized in their concepts and in their ideals. They now constitute excellent soldiers, with competent staffs and commanders. This has produced a new and dominant power in Asia, which, for its own purposes, is allied with Soviet Russia but which in its own concepts and methods has become aggressively imperialistic, with a lust for expansion and increased power normal to this type of imperialism. There is little of the ideological concept either one way or another in the Chinese make-up. The standard of living is so low and the capital accumulation has been so thoroughly dissipated by war that the masses are desperate and eager to follow any leadership which seems to promise the alleviation of local stringencies. I have from the beginning believed that the Chinese Communists' support of the North Koreans was the dominant one. Their interests are, at present, parallel with those of the Soviet. But I believe that the aggressiveness recently displayed not only in Korea but also in Indo-China and Tibet and pointing potentially toward the South reflects predominantly the same lust for the expansion of power which has animated every would-be conqueror since the beginning of time."

"For years, Chinese intellectuals distinguished between words and actions. Western political ideas could be discussed in China as long as nobody tried to enact them... Sealing China off from western ideas poses some practical problems... Chinese leaders since Deng Xiaoping have adhered to a principle known as 'Hide your strength, bide your time'... No diplomatic relationship matters more to China's future than its dealings with the United States... For years, American military leaders worried that there was a growing risk of an accidental clash between China and the U.S., in part because Beijing protested U.S. policies by declining meetings between senior commanders... A decade ago, the Chinese Internet was alive with debate, confession, humor, and discovery. Month by month, it is becoming more sterilized and self-contained. To the degree that China's connection to the outside world matters, the digital links are deteriorating. Voice-over-Internet calls, viral videos, podcasts, the minor accessories of contemporary digital life, are less reachable abroad than they were a year ago. It's an astonishing thing to observe in a rising superpower. How many countries in 2015 have an Internet connection to the world that is worse than it was a year ago?"

"The leadership from the top over the last three American presidencies has steadily pushed US public opinion from being friendly towards China in the direction of hostility. Intellectual property theft is a widely used reason for giving China a hard time. Yet in a recent survey made by the US-China Business Council, intellectual property protection ranked sixth on a list of pressing concerns among American companies which trade with China. In 2014 China created its first specialized court to handle intellectual property cases. In 2015 plaintiffs brought before the court 63 cases. The court ruled for the foreign firms in all 63. China itself is clearly against the theft of business secrets."

"In September 2018, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro visited China, where he met with China’s President Xi Jinping and signed a series of important agreements on trade and culture. Toward the end of his stay, Maduro said that the two countries had built “a relationship of mutual benefit, of shared gain.” Among these agreements was one that highlights the depth of the collaboration: this was for China to participate with the Great Venezuela Housing Mission (GMVV) to build more than 13,000 homes in the El Valle parish in Caracas. The focus of the international media has been on the oil trade between China and Venezuela, and in the aid from China to Venezuela; but the connections go deeper, into the social life of the people who are struggling to emerge from deprivation... China, Arreaza (foreign minister of Venezuela) says, trades with countries without interference in their internal affairs. This is quite different from the Western model, notably that overseen by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which pushes for structural adjustment alongside loans. Because China respects the sovereign choices of a country, Arreaza told me, “China has proven to be a reliable partner for the region and it can continue to play a key role in our development for many years to come.”"

"China seems to have been very much similar to the West, both in the production of new religious movements and in attracting to them figures from the political left who were officially promoting the struggle against “superstition.” Reconstructions of “Chinese traditional culture” as “non-religious,” and of the rich Chinese religious pluralism as mere “folk religion” should be viewed as propaganda rather than history."

"China’s battle against poverty has benefited the largest number of people in human history. To sustain poverty reduction gains, China will focus more on achieving endogenous development in areas that have been lifted out of poverty and introduce vigorous measures to support rural revitalization. Our goal is to achieve common prosperity and high-quality development including through the rural revitalization strategy with a focus in five key areas: industry development, human capital, culture, ecological environment and local governance.”"

"The Chinese have always struck me as pretty cautious, even crafty, in managing their rise. It's true that they’re a lot more aggressive since 2009, but I don't see them suddenly becoming reckless. I always found that factoid that the PRC spends more on internal than external security to be indicative that CCP is, in fact, very insecure at the top. It's got to have an ideology with foreign enemies, otherwise the Chinese people might see the real enemy, the CCP's corruption, rejection of democracy and unwillingness to admit the horrors of ."

"Contemporaneous with the age of Greek culture, while Rome was yet an infant city and the rest of Europe in a condition of barbarism, the Chinese were a civilised race. Many years before the Christian era they had evolved under the name of Taoism, a set of principles and a mystic teaching based on the writings of Laotzu, which formed a not altogether despicable substitute for a religion, while in Confucianism they enjoyed a sound philosophy. Under these influences the arts of peace gradually achieved the first place among the national ideas. The application of principles of reason to the relationships of daily life, the adjustment of differences by discussion, and the cultivation of respect for age and learning, became cardinal principles."

"I hear from higher up that China seems to be succeeding on many fronts – engineering, commerce, hotels, agriculture - everything. In many ways, don’t we need to take them as a model example for us?"

"Back in about 1753 it took a letter three days to go from New York City to Washington, and today you can go from here to China in less time than that... Man's scientific genius has been amazing."

"Former president Jimmy Carter recently made a profound and damning statement — the United States is the “most warlike nation in the history of the world.” Carter contrasted the United States with China, saying that China is building high-speed trains for its people while the United States is putting all of its resources into mass destruction. Where are high-speed trains in the United States, Carter appropriately wondered... As if to prove Carter’s assertion, Vice President Mike Pence told the most recent graduating class at West Point that it “is a virtual certainty that you will fight on a battlefield for America at some point in your life... You will lead soldiers in combat. It will happen.” Clearly referring to Venezuela, Pence continued, “Some of you may even be called upon to serve in this hemisphere.” In other words, Pence declared, war is inevitable, a certainty for this country."

"Taiwan is not a vital Australian interest. We have no alliance with Taipei. There is no piece of paper sitting in Canberra which has an alliance with Taipei. We do not recognise it as a sovereign state – we’ve always seen it as a part of China... My view is Australia should not be drawn into a military engagement over Taiwan, US-sponsored or otherwise..."

"In October 2020, the IMF in its annual report nominated China as the world’s largest economy. It says China’s economy is now 20% larger than the United States, 24tn versus 20tn – a report which was endorsed by the CIA. So you have the IMF and the CIA out there saying China is 20% bigger than the United States now. These are the key numbers. American GDP per capita is $60,000. China’s GDP per capita is $10,000. But as China is moving out of its old model of cheap manufactured goods, their income is going to rise. But at 10,000 US dollars per capita, China is 20% bigger than the US. How many years is it going to take China to get to 20,000? Not 60 … but with the highly urbanised economy of theirs, it will take a decade, perhaps. If it gets to $20,000 US per capita, it will be 2.5 times bigger than the United States. To which the United States says: “That is all very interesting but, look, if you behave yourselves, you Chinese, you can be a stakeholder in our system.” And you would not have to be Xi Jinping to take the view, if you are a Chinese nationalist, “let me get this right, we are already 1.25 times bigger than you, we will soon be twice as big as you and we may be 2.5 times as big as you, but we can be a stakeholder in your system, is that it?” It would make a cat laugh."

"(China debate ‘informed by the spooks’) Australian public debate is informed by the spooks. Our foreign policy debate now in Canberra is informed by the security agencies, so you are not getting a macro view of China as it really is. China wants its front doorstep and its front porch, that is Taiwan, its sea, it doesn’t want American naval forces influencing that. It wants access out of its coast into the deeper waters of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific. That’s what it’s about fundamentally."

"Both nations [China and India] are to nearly an equal degree tainted with the vices of insincerity; dissembling, treacherous, mendacious, to an excess which surpasses even the usual measure of uncultivated society. Both are disposed to excessive exaggeration with regard to everything relating to themselves. Both are cowardly and unfeeling. Both are in the highest degree conceited of themselves, and full of affected contempt for others. Both are, in the physical sense, disgustingly unclean in their persons and houses."

"When it comes to every important international issue, people of the world do not look to Beijing or Moscow to lead."

"China as a society, a government, an economy and a culture is quite difficult for us to comprehend today. The changes are so rapid in cities like Beijing and Shanghai and the culture remarkably fluid... China is increasingly influential in the world and more and more people have hopes that China will be a leader... China has ended up playing a critical role in geopolitics more quickly than anybody had anticipated."

"The Chinese are rejecting western values and multiparty democracy... It seems very incongruous to be, on the one hand, so committed to fostering more competition and market-driven flexibility in the economy and, on the other hand, to be seeking more control in the political sphere, the media, and the Internet."

"How many people outside China are aware of the responsible way China acts internationally? Take the UN for example. According to the respected journalist Fareed Zakaria, writing in this month’s Foreign Affairs, “Beijing is now the second-largest funder of the UN and UN peacekeepers. It has deployed 2,500 peacekeepers, more than all the other permanent members of the Security Council combined. Between 2000 and 2008 it supported 182 of 190 Security Council resolutions imposing sanctions on nations deemed to have violated international rules or norms”. This is a very different China than the one projected by many Western politicians and journalists. Usually, China is reported as being an impediment at the Security Council, using its veto fast and furiously. China has not gone to war since 1979. It has not used lethal military force abroad since 1988. Nor has it funded proxies or armed insurgents anywhere in the world since the early 1980s... this record of non-intervention China is unique among the world’s great powers. China has had no permanent military presence outside China until recently when it finished building its first overseas base... on the Horn of Africa to protect the shipping of its oil through the unstable political waters of the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean... China is angry when... US spy planes flying through Chinese airspace... China does not fly through US airspace. Its flights are on the other side of the world."

"The United States, Arreaza told me, “has gone to the extent of carrying out modern acts of piracy, stopping ships in the middle of the ocean and stealing cargo that was paid for by the Venezuelan people.” Not only has the United States tried to blockade Venezuela, but it continues to interfere in Venezuela’s political affairs; this includes trying to undermine the legislative elections that will be held on December 6....China has largely disregarded the U.S. sanctions against Venezuela, which is the largest recipient of Chinese loans. “When China states that it will continue to trade with Venezuela,” Arreaza told me, “it is standing against the illegality of the U.S. coercive measures that are placed on Venezuela.” Venezuela’s difficulty in servicing the debt to China is seen in Beijing as the fault of the illegal sanctions regime, which has made normal economic activity impossible; China’s “patient capital” strategy and its understanding of the geopolitical pressure on Venezuela are key to understanding its relationship."

"China, like Russia, has been reducing its dollar holdings as much as possible, just keeping enough to prevent the currency from being destabilized by the dollar inflows. China, Russia are buying gold instead of U.S. dollars as much as possible. China is trying to escape from buying Treasury securities. Why would any government want to buy Treasury securities yielding 0.1% when the dollars coming into China are trying to make loans or buying countries, making 15% profit or interest a year? Nobody would want that situation to continue. China doesn’t want it to continue. As long as it [China] is part of an international economy that is dollarized, it [China] is forced to take a loss, a sacrifice, year after year, subsidizing the U.S. economy. The only way that it can avoid that is to isolate itself from the U.S. dollar. No country until this time since 1945 has ever had the critical mass to be able to do it. That is the objective, the stated objective of Russia, China and their allies. Of course, they don’t want to buy treasury bills. That doesn’t mean that, yes, they found a wonderful investment making 0.1% a year and subsidizing the United States. That is not what China or any other country wants."

"With regard to nuclear weapons, the situation is far more dangerous than the last Doomsday Clock report. New weapons systems under development are much more effectively dangerous. The Biden administration, expanding upon Trump’s confrontational approach, has Chomsky at a loss for words to describe the danger at hand. Only recently, Biden met with NATO leaders and instructed them to plan on two wars, China and Russia. According to Chomsky: “This is beyond insanity.” Not only that, the group is carrying out provocative acts when diplomacy is really needed. This is an extraordinarily dangerous situation."

"The [Chinese Communist] Party doesn’t just want to govern China; it wants to define governance itself."

"In 2012, the Chinese sociologist Sūn Lìpíng (b. 1955) suggested the PRC [People's Republic of China] faced four possible paths. One was return to Mao-style egalitarian populism, reducing inequality and corruption but risking the violence and irrationality of the Mao era. Another was to deepen the reforms – further privatizing the economy regardless of increased inequality. The third was to maintain the status quo. The fourth was to pursue reform while applying notions of fairness, justice, and universal values."

"We are ready to expand the friendly people-to-people exchanges and enhance exchanges and cooperation in science, technology, culture, education, and other areas... Enhanced interactions and cooperation between China and the United States serve the interests of our two peoples and are conducive to world peace and development. We should stay firmly rooted in the present while looking ahead to the future, and view and approach China-U.S. relations from a strategic and long-term perspective. We should, on the basis of the principles set forth in the three Sino-U.S. joint communiqués, respect each other as equals and promote closer exchanges and cooperation. This will enable us to make steady progress in advancing constructive and cooperative China-U.S. relations, and bring more benefits to our two peoples and people of the world. We are ready to continue to work with the U.S. side and other parties concerned to peacefully resolve the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula, and the Iranian nuclear issue through diplomatic negotiation to uphold the international non-proliferation regime and safeguard global peace and stability."

"China is simply too big and too central to be ostracised. My point is that China is now so big and it is going to grow so large, it will have no precedents in modern social economic history.... we haven’t come to a point of accommodation where it acknowledges China’s pre-eminence in east Asia and the Asian mainland, in which case we can start to move towards a sensible relationship again with China. The key point is – is the rise of China legitimate? Is taking 20 per cent of humanity – 1.4 billion people – from abject poverty something the world should welcome? And in our terms, it has completely remodelled the Australian economy. If we give China the recognition I believe it is due in terms of its legitimacy … then I think a lot of these issues, the so-called 14 points, sort of fall off the table.... We have no relationship with Beijing, so why would the Prime Minister of Malaysia or Singapore or Thailand talk to us about east Asia when we are non-speakers with the biggest power, the Chinese?"

"The collapse of U.S. influence over Saudi Arabia and the Kingdom’s new alliances with China and Iran are painful emblems of the abject failure of the Neocon strategy of maintaining U.S. global hegemony with aggressive projections of military power. China has displaced the American Empire by deftly projecting, instead, economic power. Over the past decade, our country has spent trillions bombing roads, ports, bridges, and airports. China spent the equivalent building the same across the developing world."

"Let us now pause to take stock of some of the results which have accrued from the operation and influence of Confucianism during such a long period, and over such swarming myriads of the human race. It is a commonplace in the present day to assert that the Chinese are hardworking, thrifty, and sober—the last-mentioned, by the way, in a land where drunkenness is not regarded as a crime. Shallow observers of the globe-trotter type, who have had their pockets picked by professional thieves in Hong-Kong, and even resident observers who have not much cultivated their powers of observation and comparison, will assert that honesty is a virtue denied to the Chinese; but those who have lived long in China and have more seriously devoted themselves to discover the truth, may one and all be said to be arrayed upon the other side. The amount of solid honesty to be met with in every class, except the professionally criminal class, is simply astonishing. That the word of the Chinese merchant is as good as his bond has long since become a household word, and so it is in other walks of life."

"All this saber-rattling is despicable. Neither Russia nor Iran threaten the U.S. and there is no reason why the U.S. should be eager to defend Taiwan or Ukraine (and also Israel). China’s military budget is miniscule compared to the U.S. and the only real threat it represents is as a competitor on world markets, where it is already dominant in a number of key sectors. The U.S. has to get off this global dominance militarism wagon but how do we do it when both major parties embrace it?"

"[N]early every political evil can be found on display in China: slavery, discrimination, religious persecution, xenophobia, tyranny, mass-political indoctrination, colonialism, cultural genocide, and so on. And yet, the outcry against these things in America and the West is a tiny fraction of what it was with regard to South Africa in the 1980s or Israel today. Why? Some of the political answers are pretty obvious — and have much merit. A few that come to mind: China is non-Western, and many of these sins are supposed to be unique to white Europeans; China is a victim (or “victim”) of colonialism, and so we shouldn’t judge it harshly; China is very powerful, and realpolitik dictates that we be diplomatic; and so on. But there’s another reason. As you may have noticed, I’ve become much more interested in evolutionary psychology of late, particularly the topic of coalitional instincts. The coalition instinct is the programming that helped us form strategic groups that advance our self-interest. We are a social species and cooperation is what helped us skyrocket to the top of the food chain."

"So far, the world economy, particularly Australia and the United States, have benefited greatly from Chinese economic growth. This is likely to continue to be the case for some time... There is no real alternative to the United States as the global leader. China doesn't want the role. It would only divert its focus from its own development challenges. And to be frank, China would not be trusted by many countries, particularly in the , to be the global leader... Authoritarian state capitalism, seen today in China and Russia. While both countries have introduced elements of a market economy, private companies there operate side-by-side and at a significant disadvantage to state owned entities favored by government regulators. This mixed economy is not paralleled on the political side. What is emerging is an increasingly authoritarian political system with decreasing space for civil society, free media, and dissent. This model is attractive to authoritarian leaders around the world who see it as way to maintain power while still growing their economies."

"We are also seeing a diffusion of power and competition at the nation state level. This competition comes not just from Russia and China, but also from emerging countries like Brazil, India, Indonesia, and the other ASEAN states. These states are also beginning to organize themselves into structures outside of and somewhat in competition... We must find a way to convince the SCO and BRICS institutions to see themselves not as competitors but as collaborators and partners with the rest of us. The role of China will be key in this effort. Neither China nor the United States can solve global challenges by themselves. And both China and the United States need progress in meeting these challenges if they are to achieve their own objectives for the development and economic well being of their people. A way must be found for the United States and China to work together with the rest of the international community to meet the global challenges we face."

"Asia now stands at the dawn a new history of civilization to create its own future, finally emerging from the long tunnel of 150 years of westernization and overcoming the ideological conflicts of the twentieth century. Having achieved advanced industrialization based on market economics in the latter half of the twentieth century, the region is now home to some 900 million people in the middle class and about 1.1 billion 'netizens' connected by the Internet. Within certain East Asian countries, civil society and democracy are flourishing. Now, China and the ASEAN nations are progressing on their own courses. East Asia is on the verge of birthing a new era marked by civil society and democracy."

"As a foreign literature it is studied also by the Coreans, the Japanese, and the Annamites; and it may therefore be quite appropriately called the Classic Literature of the Far East. The civilization of all these nations has been affected by its study, perhaps even in a higher degree than that of the nations of Europe has been by the literatures of Greece and Rome. Millions received from it, in the course of centuries, their mental training. The Chinese who created it have through it perpetuated their national character and imparted some of their idiosyncrasies of thought to their formerly illiterate neighbors."

"The Chinese are industrious, courageous, honest, and intelligent. They created the splendid ancient Chinese civilization, and today, they're firmly committed to the path of peaceful development and are making continuous progress in the modernization drive by carrying out the reform and opening up program."

"The great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation will definitely be accompanied by the thriving of Chinese culture."

"When China sends its students to the United States, especially when it sends central bankers and planners to the United States to study (and be recruited), they are told by the U.S. “Do as we say, not as we have done.” The United States is not telling China... how to get rich in the way that it did, by protective tariffs, by creating its own money and by making other countries dependent on it. The United States does not want you to be independent and self-reliant. The United States wants China to let itself become dependent on U.S. finance in order to invest in its own industry... The neoliberal plan is not to make you independent, and not to help you grow except to the extent that your growth will be paid to US investors or used to finance U.S. military spending around the world to encircle you and trying to destabilize you in Sichuan to try to pry China apart. Look at what the United States has done in Russia, and at what the International Monetary Fund in Europe has done to Greece, Latvia and the Baltic states. It is a dress rehearsal for what U.S. diplomacy would like to do to you, if it can convince you to follow the neoliberal US economic policy of financialization and privatization. De-dollarization is the alternative to privatization and financialization."

"So the question is, how do China, Russia, Iran and other countries break free of this U.S. dollarization strategy? As now constituted, dollarization creates a circular flow that finances American military spending by forcing the costs onto foreign central banks holding dollars. The solution obviously is to avoid using dollars in order to break free of American control of your economy. To do this, you have to have a non-Dollar currency. This currency alternative has to be large enough to have a critical mass, so that it can be used internationally. That’s why China, Russia, Iran and their allies are trying to create their own currency area, incorporating largely the Shanghai Cooperation Organization."

"The U.S.-China confrontation is not simply a national rivalry, but a conflict of economic and social systems.... From today’s U.S. vantage point... China and Russia are existential threats to the global expansion of financialized rentier wealth. Today’s Cold War 2.0 aims to deter China and potentially other counties from socializing their financial systems, land and natural resources, and keeping infrastructure utilities public to prevent their being monopolized in private hands to siphon off economic rents at the expense of productive investment in economic growth. The United States hoped that China might be as gullible as the Soviet Union and adopt neoliberal policy permitting its wealth to be privatized and turned into rent-extracting privileges, to be sold off to Americans."

"We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of un-warlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities. If we are to be a really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world."