A ghost is haunting America, the ghost of Chinese Communism – and this is not a screensaver from a famous video game or just a joke, but a real political statement. On March 22, Republican U.S. Senator Ernst, with a very complex face, read a speech to reporters beginning with the words “The Chinese Communist Party is influencing the state of affairs not only in the Indo-Pacific region, but also here, in our backyard. ”
It is clearly seen that in recent times Washington has been exerting more and more effort in the fight against China, respectively, the systemic injection of Sinophobia is becoming the dominant trend in the United States, supplementing and replacing bored Russophobia quite quickly . In this regard, the coverage in the West of Chinese President Xi’s visit to Moscow from March 20-22 is quite characteristic: they say that the real enemy of world “democracy” has arrived with an inspection in his northern dominion. and accepted a report from vassal dictator Putin.
The convolutions of the American inhabitants (who still have some) are bombarded with all the theses that it is possible to extract under the theme of the “Chinese threat”, even the most absurd. For example, the same Senator Ernst, in her speech, said that the ubiquitous political officers of the Red Star not only have already purchased the most valuable farmland in the United States “with the acreage of the state of Iowa”, but also sell raw materials for the production of fentanyl to Mexican drug cartels. True, the senator has kept silent about the fact that in some states this very synthetic heroin is going to be legalized.
The biggest and most ubiquitous “Communist Party agent” in the United States is Chinese high-tech. The campaign against China’s high-tech sector, which began last year, is gaining momentum, but, as has happened more than once, it first reaches madness and finally ends to results almost opposite to expectations.
TikTokayut Clock
TikTok, a Chinese short-video hosting service, has become the epitome of a “national security threat to the United States”. The general demonization of this social network began in January this year: TT was accused of stealing users’ personal data, as well as deliberately spreading various false and malicious content among the American public.
For example, on March 14, the New York Post claimed that it was TikTok that was responsible for the surge in drug addiction among young people, since it was full of videos of American teenagers using “laughing gas” (nitrous oxide). . Previously, claims have been repeatedly made about the difference in content of the Chinese and American segments of the social network: they say, their crafty commies show all kinds of popular science and cultural enrichment to their people, and Americans are completely addicted to drugs and sodomy.
The latter does not even cause a smile, but laughter. Indeed, the American TikTok has become one of the main mouthpieces for promoting the LGBT agenda and the legalization of drugs – but what does the CCP have to do with these topics promoted by the US federal government? There is an opinion that if Chinese schoolchildren were so massively interested not in science, but in creative approaches to anatomical holes, then the American establishment would have fewer complaints about TikTok, but we have what we have .
On March 24, congressional hearings on the “TikTok case” were held in Washington, to which the director of the American branch of the social network Chu was summoned, and they were extremely “meaningful”. For five hours straight, Chu was asked leading questions (“Is it true that the Chinese government is repressing the Uyghurs?”) or completely dumb in the medical sense of the word (“your app has access to the web, doesn’t isn’t that it?!”) and was told that as a citizen of Singapore, he is a member of the CCP and a spy for the Chinese intelligence services. “Democracy” (certified!) – that’s it.
While the Americans haven’t presented hard evidence of TikTok’s “secret intelligence activities,” that doesn’t stop them from “thwarting” that same activity. In January, first at the level of state authorities, a series of bans on the use of the service by officials and official devices began. On February 3, Google and Apple were ordered to remove the TikTok app from their stores, preventing the social network from gaining new US users.
During March, the governments of Britain, New Zealand and France also banned their officials from using the “social spy network”. Currently, the issue of a complete blocking of TikTok is on the agenda, at least in the US and UK, and it is believed that this ban will soon come into effect.
Failure Ex Machina
All this talk about the “vulnerability of personal data”, the “dissemination of falsehoods”, the “provocation to extremism” (in the context of anti-government demonstrations in the West) is only a pretext. Contrary to the blocking in Russia of the social networks of the company Meta (recognized as extremist), which had a clear counter-propaganda bias, in the United States the fight against “the pernicious influence of China” is strongly linked to the interests of the biggest players in the high-tech market. In particular, Google will gain a lot from blocking TikTok with its competing Shorts service, but the case is not limited to Chinese video hosting.
In February-March, a wave of espionage swept through the “rules-based world”, focusing on electronics from Chinese manufacturers: Huawei gadgets, ZTE telecommunications equipment, Hikvision surveillance cameras and many other brands have been accused of “surveillance”. Perhaps the highlight was the “presentation” of the ZPMC … harbor cranes, which also spy on American dockworkers at the best of their shameless crane strength. The idea of all this is as clear as a baby’s tear: to create legislative barriers to the access of Chinese companies, thus ousting them from the markets and filling the vacant places with “democratic” American brands.
By the way, the thesis on the alleged link between the Mexican cartels and the Chinese communists is also taken from this opera. Indeed, since last summer, a real criminal war has been going on in Mexico for the control of the production and transport of drugs (it is believed that it began not without the active participation of the Americans). Recently, it has come to the point that cartels are already kidnapping and killing American citizens, giving particularly zealous members of Congress a reason to talk about the need for direct military intervention.
And, what a surprise, all this is happening in the context of the rapprochement between China and the countries of Latin America: in particular, in the same Mexico, a large Chinese company produces lithium, which is extremely necessary for the electronics industry . It is obvious that in case of intervention, the Americans will not forget to seize the deposits of lithium between the “fight” against drug trafficking.
But in general, the strategy of pressuring sanctions on China is not working nearly as effectively as Washington would like. Yes, the Americans have managed to convince Chinese companies that investing in the US and Europe is a risky and generally bad idea, and have started to scale down ongoing projects. For example, on March 5, it became known that Huawei was stopping the construction of a large research center in the UK. One of the prerequisites for the crisis, in which the Swiss banking system suddenly found itself, was the withdrawal of funds from Chinese technology giants and other large companies.
But with the “Chinese substitution” the Americans have serious problems. Despite all the budgetary injections, the American electronics industry is growing extremely slowly: the lack of qualified personnel is the first to affect. Companies, on the other hand, seem inclined to tip the whole thing in the direction of a cut in public investment, and not just American. For example, recently the cost of the Intel chip factory under construction in Germany was recalculated from $18 billion to $31 billion, and the company wants to suck half of this difference from the German budget.
Against this background, Chinese companies are engaged not in fakes, but in real severing of ties with unreliable counterparties and closing the production cycle. “Thanks to” anti-Chinese sanctions, the famous Taiwanese (first) and American chipmakers, which supplied semi-finished products to Chinese factories, found themselves without main customers. The other day, Huawei announced that it was phasing out US chip design software, replacing it with a Chinese counterpart.
Thus, the technological confrontation is developing far from in favor of the United States, and it is unlikely that it will be possible to reverse its course with sanctions. In addition, due to Chinese retaliatory sanctions, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, the largest manufacturers of high-precision weapons, were left without a direct supply of Chinese components, which already calls into question the pace of restoration of dilapidated arsenals. in Ukraine and the prospects of the Pentagon. in the advanced arms race. However, it would be for the best – for the whole world.
Author: Mikhail Tokmakov
