Militarily, diplomatically and economically, Beijing is challenging America’s dominance at every turn. Could it soon overtake it?
https://www.thetimes.com/article/669bd10b-95d6-4dc6-8ad9-06e9145da1a4?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Reddit#Echobox=1744458407
Posted by TimesandSundayTimes
26 comments
***From The Sunday Times:***
At the end of a week in which the Trump administration’s battle with China reached new heights, the fear is that this is just the start. From trade and finance to actual military capability, the People’s Republic has spent decades preparing take over as the world’s most powerful nation — and it is becoming clear that that moment is now much closer.
Trump and his team have sought to tackle one manifestation of declining American power — a trade deficit that last year topped $295bn in China’s favour. However, their approach has only exposed the scale of the challenge facing Washington across multiple fronts.
There was a long-held assumption that China’s own demographic and economic concerns would deter it from pursuing a full trade war with the United States, since access to American markets is so important. But the Trump tariffs brought tit-for-tat actions that have dispelled this belief.
On Wednesday the White House announced a 90-day moratorium on most of the tariffs that have upended the world economic order, but increased its tariffs on Chinese goods to 145%. Beijing responded with a 125% tariff on US imports while the Chinese commerce ministry declared that the tariff hikes exposed “the blackmailing nature of the US. China will never accept this … China will fight to the end.”
China is retaliating from a position of strength. Although it had a massive volume of sales to the US prior to the tariff battle beginning, they only amounted to 2% of its total GDP.
He could avoid announcing the tariffs, and increase cooperation with Europe and the US’ asiatic allies and partners
China is too big to fail just how the US is too big to fail.
How can he stop China, when the US cant even stop Russia over Ukraine.
“Can Trump stop himself from pushing the world towards China?” Sounds more appropriate.
Remember when Russia invaded Ukraine to stop NATO expansion and ended up with double its border space being shared with NATO and an expanded NATO… Trump is doing the same here with trade and tarrifs.
Things were going well when Biden was in office; probably little chance now, due to poor decisions.
>Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” … It is based on the assumption that if the publishers were confident that the answer was yes, they would have presented it as an assertion; by presenting it as a question, they are not accountable for whether it is correct or not.
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Before Trump, China was the world’s boogeyman. Now it’s the US.
The fact that ASEAN, EU, S Korea, Japan, etc are negotiating deals with China left and right means the US is no longer the leader of the free world and it is the US that handed China the global throne.
There is no longer a free world. There are now giant powers establishing spheres of influence and Trump is to blame for it.
And if push comes to shove that the US goes all in and make the trade war into a hot one as a last ditch effort to preserve itself, it will be slugging it out alone, without allies, because of Trump.
Without an industrial complex worth that name, the USA would need to ask for iron, aluminium etc. to China to wage war on China. Of course China knows it and it sleeps well.
He could have by doing nothing at all. Now it’s probably too late
No they can not, and no they aren’t trying to do that.
USA is attempting a decoupling from China, not suppressing China. If China is suppressed by way of USA no longer sending 1.2 trillion a year there, so be it.
I don’t think there was ever a point where we could stop China from becoming a superpower; only delay it, and be better prepared for it. We needed to rely less on their manufacturing of critical goods and strategic resources, while shoring up partnerships in the Pacific – especially Southeast Asia. We also needed to support growth in the Americas so that we could “onshore” that stuff to friendly countries our hemisphere.
Unfortunately, Trump seems to be speedrunning China’s rise and making them look like a more stable, dependable power. Because they may be authoritarian and belligerent with a lot of their neighbors, but they are predictable.
That’s going to be a massive challenge without any allies.
Its insane that the administration apparently wants to focus on combating China, but alienating every single ally on the way. This obviously includes Europe, but more importantly Japan and Taiwan.
If the US wants to drag down Europe we will naturally gravitate to China even if our values don’t align.
This is why American exceptionalism is poison. Him and his supporters genuinely believe in the authoritarian mindset that “bigger” countries should be able to bully others, and it’s never going to be successful; there is a reason the world moved away from this, and it’s not going to change soon.
I know it’s already been mentioned that Chinese sales to the US only make up 2% of its GDP, but the US also needs to sell a frightening amount of T-Bills due its incredible deficit, of which China buys around 10%. China could simply stop buying. It has more tools in its arsenal. Not to mention the bond markets are still not stable.
All that’s going to happen is that Trump is going to grovel in private once his advisors convince him there’s no way out and that he will incur intense political and economic backlash, then Xi and Trump will go back to their respective peoples and say they “won”.
American hegemony, gained in part through America’s economic prowess, is coming to an end and it’s all because he decided to wreck things by himself. Xi is probably kicking his feet in glee right now.
Trump made China a bigger superpower when he decided to use North Korea as his model for reshaping America.
Doubt Trump will do anything consequential but China’s demographic decline has probably sealed their fate in that regard
Multi-polar world with regional spheres of influence looks likely
Any attempt to “box them in” like the USSR is fundamentally flawed; China is a global economic and trade powerhouse and widely seen as a reliable (or at least stable) partner, the USSR was an autarky-driven pariah state with few exports besides weapons. The best way to combat China would be to bolster our own manufacturing (to compete with them abroad and insulate ourselves from them), and build up a reputable image as a stable and easy-to-work with country, not a country that see-saws every 4 years and whose first instinct is to bomb you if we don’t like you. That will take time, decades, to start to bear fruit, and would require a fundamental re-orientation of how the US sees its foreign policy. And even then you wouldn’t be “stopping” China, merely competing with them to box them out of a few key regions like Western Europe, Japan, etc.
No way. Trump is not a leader. He is a conman. He demonstrated his lack of leadership during his first term and was not invited back for a second. Now, thanks to Musk and his money, he is back in our faces for a 2nd term. Thanks to Scotus, he is without guardrails. Heaven help Americans and America. We are in deep do-do.
Nope. China is a 5000 year old civilization. They are in life for the long run. The US, not quite so much.
I think the more important question at this point is: Can Trump even stop facilitating the rise of China?
Should ask, can Trump make people pay their eggs for 10usd without any fuss? Lol
lol….no..but I bet he can enrich himself at the expense of the US population. Trump is another billionaire clown with the same exact agenda as the rest of them. Only one way out now that the system will only protect billionaire clowns, no matter what they do.
edit: [Nailed it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoTV-J7QtLM)
China or East Asia in general need to do better to integrate into global culture otherwise it can never hold any meaningful influence on non-East Asian countries.
Can Trump stop _himself_ from _aiding China in_ becoming the world’s superpower? Probably there lies the question…
Everything he is doing is challenging America’s position as the world’s superpower… undermining alliances, arbitrary trade policy, antagonizing Europe, and befriending none other than Vladimir Putin…
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