What’s Not China’s Fault

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“We have met the enemy and he is us.“ — Pogo, a now-defunct comic strip.

[For a new coda, click here.]

Sunday’s NYT has a front-page article about Trump’s last-ditch attempt to save his re-election chances by fomenting a new Cold War against China.

Trump’s skilled rabble rousers have a lot to work with. China has confined over a million Uighurs, for little more than their ethnicity and religion. It has, in essence, just breached its agreement with the Brits for the half-century-long handover of Hong Kong, with more than half the agreed term still to go. It’s building up islands and military forces in the South China Sea, in violation of international law. And it’s busy, as usual, stealing every piece of American research and technology that’s not bolted down.

But dismay, anger and even outrage are not plans. They’re only so for a man like Trump. For him careful strategy is for wussies; the drunken roundhouse punch is all. It’s what we’ve come to expect from a man who’s never served our military and can’t get along with the most distinguished men who have.

We lost abjectly in Vietnam—and we committed the worst collective atrocities since slavery—based on a simplistic “domino theory” cooked up by one Robert S. McNamara, a car maker. So before we go down that road again—let alone with history’s most rapidly rising and most populous superpower—we ought to spare a few moments for sober reflection.

Just as China is today’s most rapidly rising nation, we are the most rapidly declining, with the possible exception of Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Before we start a new Cold War, we ought at least to figure out what parts of our steep decline are our fault, and what may be China’s. Then, if we are smart and disciplined—words inapplicable to our to leadership for over three years—we can develop coherent strategies to address both sources of decline.

At the moment, the sources that are our own fault absolutely dominate the picture. China didn’t force the knee of a rogue cop onto the neck of George Floyd, snuffing out his life while he was chained like a slave. China didn’t shoot Ahmaud Arbery down while jogging innocently in a pastoral suburban community. A father-son “team” of what looks like the vilest white trailer trash did. China didn’t exploit the vast social upheaval that these atrocities caused to divide our people and distract us from our longstanding economic decline. Trump did.

China may have botched its own initial response to Covid-19, but it didn’t botch ours. Our president and his uber-incompetent lackeys did, focusing like lasers on the president’s fragile ego, the Dow, and his chances for re-election, which wane with every new thousand deaths and every million newly unemployed.

China didn’t move our factories abroad to China and Mexico, leaving millions of skilled workers with little or nothing worthy of their skill to do. Our own oligarchs did.

They arbitraged wage-rate differentials with poor foreign peasants to make a quick buck. They did so heedless of the effect on our own workers, our economy, and our ability to maintain an advanced industrial infrastructure–which had made us the greatest national innovator in human history.

All China did was steal some of our technology, while our oligarchs willingly sold and transferred the vast bulk of it for thirty pieces of silver. Only now, as our industrialists and leaders are beginning to understand how self-defeating our policies have been, has China started stealing more, and then only because the door to our treasures that the oligarchs left open is closing.

China is not responsible for the astonishing delusion and deception of our people. Facebook and Twitter are. Facebook has reportedly refused to take down false paid political ads, making money from consequential lies. And Twitter is the means by which our president promulgates most of his lies and misleading claims—reportedly 20,000 by now.

China and Russia, with their spooks and trolls, do take advantage of Facebook and Twitter. But these platforms, with their wild-West approach to “news” and truth, provide the means. For the platforms themselves, the profit motive rules and lies increase their profit. Without them as willing or unwitting accomplices, Trump’s presidency could not exist.

China is also not responsible for the inanity, and sometimes insanity, of our own globalization and trade policy. It’s not responsible for Trump’s useless blunderbuss tariffs, which hurt our own industry and consumers and bear no resemblance to more sophisticated “rifle-shot” tariffs that might really neutralize wage differentials. It’s not responsible for our caring more for the bankers in Hong Kong than for the million Uighurs thrown into gulags, as those bankers now flee the Mainland’s effective assimilation of Hong Kong.

China is not responsible for our own stupidity, the breathtaking incompetence of our leaders, and our own Congress’ failure to hold them to account. China didn’t force all Republicans but Mitt Romney to acquit Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of justice amounting to treason. It has no dog in the three-way fight among us, Russia and Ukraine. China didn’t fire or move five inspectors general so that Trump and his cronies could continue violating the law and looting our Treasury to do it.

We, not China, are our own worst enemy. Our most destructive failures are almost entirely our own fault. That goes for everything from failing to contain Covid-19, through the rise of white supremacy and our willful abandonment of our industrial and technological base, to Congress’ and the courts’ failure to preserve our balance of power and checks and balances.

Nevertheless, in yet another routine act of deception, our master of distraction and displacement will try to make China a key factor in the coming presidential election. He will rant and rave like a warmonger. But he is, in his soul, a bully and a coward.

So Trump will brandish the saber but never pull it from its scabbard. That’s been his consistent practice during his presidency. Paradoxically, that may be the only consistently good thing to emerge from his abysmal excuse for leadership: despite considerable provocation from Iran, he hasn’t started a new war yet. (It remains to be seen whether he will yet do so out of sheer stupidity or miscalculation, or near-election desperation.)

Make no mistake about it. The word “decline” is far too weak. Our country is in social, economic, industrial and political free fall. Just walk through a Lowe’s, Home Depot, or Walmart and count the huge proportion of goods there made in China, or in other foreign nations. Or tally what’s made in China from the stuff you order from Amazon. You will quickly discover that we have sold and transferred almost our entire industrial base abroad, except for cars and planes.

This was not China’s fault. Our own oligarchs, plutocrats and shareholders did it all deliberately and willingly, for short-term profit. And our economists encouraged them for the sake of abstractions like “efficiency” and “free trade,” without an apparent thought to the terrible social, political and practical consequences that we are all experiencing now. Cause and effect are not Western economists’ forte.

That’s why, when it comes to Covid-19 test kits, masks, gowns and other simple PPE, we still haven’t gotten our act together and are relying on overwhelmed foreign suppliers. The pandemic has pushed us over the edge, but we’ve been approaching the cliff for decades. During the last three years, we’ve been running toward it.

We have no parachute. But if we return our government to the experts and to pols with some empathy and understanding, we might land in a soft spot.

There is only one way to do that now. We must dump Trump and his entire party, which stands for nothing but its own power and survival, plus further enrichment of our oligarchs in the most unequal society in over a century. If we keep our eye on that ball, and ignore distractions involving China, we might just save our democracy, and later our economy.

But none of this is up to China. It’s all up to us now. Picking a fight with China in the midst of our own economic and social free fall, and before we deploy a strategic parachute, will only make us weaker and our landing harder.

Coda: The Final Irony For over thirty years, oligarchs, greedy executives, bankers, lawyers and their GOP lackeys have sold our ability to make things down the river. Few of these desk jockeys would recognize a torque wrench, let alone know how or when to use one. So they don’t care who makes it.

But now they want to start a new Cold War with the rising power that they’ve encouraged to make almost every piece of hardware and equipment we use. Good luck with that! Apparently they think sheer gall can substitute for brains, as well as industry.

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