Link: Diplomatic Engagement

Link: Diplomatic Engagement

( ) Diplomatic engagement with China is a coercive strategy aimed at maximizing American imperial interests.

[John Chan, correspondent for the World Socialist Website. “US-China dialogue in shambles.” 20 July 2013. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/07/20/diag-j20.html

The US policy towards China has nothing to do with fostering cooperation. The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” has been an offensive on all fronts—diplomatic, economic and military—aimed at undermining China and ensuring continued US dominance. The NSA’s extensive cyber spying is part of the US build-up and preparations for war against China.¶

As the US-China dialogue was proceeding, Russia and China held their largest-ever joint naval exercises in the Sea of Japan, pointedly aimed at the US-Japan alliance. Provocatively, the US held joint air drills with Japan in the same region.¶

Economic talks involving Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang also exposed worsening relations. While Lew welcomed China’s new pro-market measures, he quickly turned to a list of US demands for “an economic relationship where our firms and workers operate on a level-playing field and where the rights of those who participate in the global economy—including innovators and the holders of intellectual property—are preserved and protected from government-sponsored cyber intrusion.”¶

Amid rising tensions between the US and China, tactical differences have emerged in the American foreign policy establishment about the dangers of driving China towards Russia and of confrontation and war. Writing in the New York Times, Jeffrey Mankoff, a Center for Strategic and International Studies analyst, last Thursday advised that “giving Beijing and Moscow more of stake in the running of the world might be uncomfortable, but the alternative is bringing the Chinese-Russian axis that US policy makers fear closer to reality.”

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has similar views to those of Mankoff, had held out great hopes for last month’s Obama-Xi summit. Kissinger was instrumental in the forging President Nixon’s rapprochement with China in 1972 that was aimed at undermining the Soviet Union. While suggesting a more conciliatory approach, Kissinger, and others like him, leaves no doubt that he ultimately backs the use of force to support the interests of US imperialism.

¶ Other figures argue that making US concessions to China is unrealistic. A New York Times article earlier this month entitled, “A New Anti-American Axis?”, by Leslie Gelb and Dimitri Simes, warned: “Russia and China appear to have decided that, to better advance their own interests, they need to knock Washington down a peg or two... Both countries are seeking greater diplomatic clout that they apparently reckon they can acquire only by constraining the United States.”¶ The reality is, far from making concessions, over the past two decedes the US has embarked an aggressive militarist agenda against its potential rivals. The bitter exchanges at the latest US-China dialogue are another warning that American imperialism is dragging the world even deeper into conflict and war.

Link: Diplomatic Engagement

( ) The US will use diplomatic engagement to demand greater access to Chinese markets.

Goldstein, 2012

[Fred Goldstein, activist contributing editor to Workers World. “STRUGGLE IN CHINA, PART 6: Imperialism hails Chen, attacks Bo as Wall Street gains in China-U.S. talks.” May 12, 2012. http://www.workers.org/2012/world/china_0517/

The U.S. delegation came with a plan for China to improve the “safety net” for the Chinese people and to build a consumer society: China should “rebalance” its economy and not rely on national development projects and exports. China should raise the value of its currency and allow more competition. It should reduce subsidies to the state-owned corporations and give private capital a better chance. State-owned enterprises should pay more dividends to the government to finance the safety net to ensure that people would spend more money.¶ In these demands, the predatory interests of Wall Street are couched in soothing words about improving the lives of the Chinese people. But the fact is — as the Chinese leaders know full well — the imperialist corporations are facing a world capitalist crisis and are desperate for markets, not only to utilize their overcapacity in the production of commodities but to expand their areas of capital investment.¶ The pressure to further open up the Chinese market is growing more intense with every report about the growing recessionary tide in Europe and the economic slowdowns in India, Brazil, Russia and throughout the world capitalist system. Capitalism is slowly buckling under the weight of its own productivity and the consequent stresses of overproduction.¶ Concessions on investment¶ Washington got agreement from the Chinese negotiators at the meeting to allow foreign firms to take up to a 49 percent stake in joint securities ventures. A hefty increase from the current limit of 33 percent, this gives American financial firms greater ability to invest in the country. China also agreed to make it easier for American firms to offer financing for auto loans. This permits U.S. finance capital to take more wealth out of China and to wield greater financial influence in the markets.¶ This is a Chinese concession to the urgent pressure of U.S. bankers and brokers to find new sources of profitable, secure financial investment, which is being called into question every day as the global debt crisis deepens

Link: Economic Engagement

( ) Policies of engagement treating China as an “economic opportunity” reflect the desire for exploitation and subjugation – reducing China’s otherness into a unified, homogenous entity. Such representations are not objective. They are intrinsically linked to a certain Western “self-imagination” that reproduces new forms of power politics.

Pan, 2012

[Chengxin Pan, Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Deakin University. Knowledge, Desire and Power in Global Politics: Western Representations of China's Rise. 2012, pg 56-57]

At first sight, the 'China opportunity' paradigm sounds more positive than the 'China threat' discourse. It does not, for example, treat China as fundamentally different or threatening. Whilst some 'China opportunity' advocates remain wary about the Chinese regime and its long-term strategic ambition, most are optimistic about the Chinese people and the various opportunities the country has to offer. Indeed, for Edward Friedman, such positive representations constitute a break with 'a long-discredited Eurocentric "othering" that distinguishes the good West from all the bad rest'.75 True, to distinguish the good West from the bad China is probably a case of 'othering'. Yet, depicting China as an opportunity (for the West) does not necessarily mean a deviation from Eurocentrism. The construction of Otherness, as noted before, is not so much about treating others as threats per se as it is about the employment of such discursive tactics as imposition, reduction, and denial when it comes to understanding others' subjectivities. On this account, there is little improvement in the paradigmatic shift from the 'China threat' to the 'China opportunity'. Consider, for example, the enthusiastic portrayal of China as a modern-day El Dorado made up of 'one billion customers'. Though a seemingly true and innocuous assessment, it reduces China to a huge yet impersonalised market, with a billion faceless customers and easy-to-control cheap labour. In short, China is little more than 'an outlet for American commerce and investment'. 76 The diversity and richness of Chinese geography, history, humanity and subjectivity matters little, if at all. The only hint of Western historical sensitivity over China is manifested in the updating of the customer numbers from '400 million' in the 1930s to a current round-up figure of 'one billion'. In order for China to be seen as an opportunity, this Othering (objectification) of China as a market is not accidental, but appears essential. Otherwise, the sheer number of the Chinese population could instead stir up fear. As one of the Cold War architects George F. Kennan explained in 1948 with regard to Asia more generally: ¶ We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great... between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern for relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. 77 ¶ Therefore, the imagination of China as a market is a necessary fantasy in place of an otherwise looming danger of the 'envy and resentment' from its vast population. Seen through an 'opportunity' lens, China can remain an attractive but passive Other, ready to be explored and exploited. This Othering tendency has, for example, enabled the West to take China's WTO entry as 'almost exclusively a matter of improving [Western] access to China's markets, not enhancing Chinese access to other markets'.7s Just as the 'China threat' paradigm deprives the Chinese of any security concern of their own, so the emphasis on 'China as a fabled market'/`the world's workshop' is primarily about keeping China as a place to which 'our access, as a country and as individual citizens, is free and comfortable'.79 This quote, originally expressed by a senior economist from the RAND Corporation in the 1960s, captured a longstanding sexualised colonial desire of turning the colonised society into an accessible, feminised object. Such desire was clearly evident in the remarks by a top-ranking member of the American business community on the China opportunity: 'we are talking about the future of e-commerce, the biggest business innovation of our time... in China, the biggest market in the world.... and that gives me a hard-on! And I want it to give you a hard-on too!!'"

Link: Economic Engagement

( ) Economic engagement will be used to contain China and secure US interests.

Peters, 2015 [Tom Peters, leading member of the Socialist Equality Party group in New Zealand. “The US ‘pivot to Asia’ and the drive to war against China.” 8 May 2015. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/05/08/mdtp-m08.html

To counter its profound economic crisis, the US ruling elite is determined to assert control over the profits extracted from the Chinese working class and the resources of the entire continent of Asia, no matter what the cost.¶ Almost four years ago, in November 2011, the Obama administration announced its “pivot to Asia.” This is a comprehensive strategy to militarily encircle China, undermine its economic influence in the region and compel Beijing to submit to Washington’s demands. The pivot has transformed the region into a seething cauldron of tensions and rivalries.¶ The reckless military build-up by the United States and its allies has been accompanied by endless denunciations of so-called Chinese “aggression” and “assertiveness” in disputed areas of the South and East China Seas. Obama recently accused China of using its size “to muscle other countries in the region around rules that disadvantage us.”¶ The hypocrisy of such claims is staggering. They turn reality on its head.¶ Just in the past month, the US conducted large-scale war games with South Korea and the Philippines, designed to threaten North Korea and China. Washington plans to hold 29 military exercises in a dozen Asian and Pacific countries over the next five years. Over the same period 60 percent of the US navy will be deployed to the region.¶ The United States has poured thousands of soldiers into bases in the Philippines and Australia. It is developing a sophisticated missile defence system with Japan and Korea, as part of the Pentagon’s strategy to win a nuclear war against China.¶ Alongside the military build-up, the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership, currently being negotiated with 11 countries, represents the economic front of the anti-China pivot. Its purpose is to rewrite trade and investment laws to benefit US corporations. Defence Secretary Ashton Carter underscored its aggressive character by declaring that “passing [the] TPP is as important to me as another aircraft carrier” in order to promote a “global order” that serves American interests.¶ Inter-imperialist rivalries have begun to emerge over the carve-up of profits from China. Several European powers, including Britain, Germany and France, have joined China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, ignoring Washington’s objections. While currently functioning as allies of US wars and interventions around the globe, these countries have their own imperialist interests to pursue, which can rapidly bring them into conflict with the US.¶ Washington’s response will be to rely ever more heavily on its military superiority to secure its hegemony in Asia.

Link: Economic Engagement

( ) Economic engagement is always accompanied by military authority, making any Asian Pivot a militarizing gesture.

Lazare, 2014

[Sarah, staff writer for Common Dreams. “'Corporate Colonialism': Protesters Slam TPP, US Military 'One-Two Punch'.” April 22, 2014. http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/04/22/corporate-colonialism-protesters-slam-tpp-us-military-one-two-punch]

Critics charge that this economic and military agenda is part of a broader strategic plan to bolster U.S. geopolitical control of the region and hedge against China.¶ The TPP, which has been referred to as NAFTA on steroids, is a so-called "free trade agreement" currently under negotiation between 12 countries — the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam — together comprising 40 percent of the world’s GDP. Despite the breadth of this potential agreement, the TPP negotiations have been highly secretive, with the bulk of publicly available information exposed by WikiLeaks.¶ Documents show that negotiators are pushing for inclusion of NAFTA's infamous corporate tribunals, in which corporations "settle disputes" with governments in secrecy and trample domestic protections from public health to environmental regulations, completely circumventing their own national legal systems.¶ Cassidy Regan of Flush the TPP told Common Dreams that the TPP is "nothing but corporate colonialism." She added, "The supposed environmental protections chapter includes nothing substantive. The intellectual property chapter raised major concerns among internet freedom activists, as well as public health workers who know the expansion of monopoly drug patents for major pharmaceutical companies will only further raise the price of and threaten access to life-saving medicines worldwide."¶ Christine Ahn writes for Foreign Policy in Focus that the U.S. push for the TPP is part of a "one-two punch," with the second blow dealt by the so-called U.S. military pivot to the Asia-Pacific.¶ The renewed U.S. military interest in the Asia-Pacific region, pushed in 2011 by Hillary Clinton, aims to deploy 60 percent of the U.S. Navy fleet to the Asia Pacific region by 2020. This effort includes: the re-building and occupation of U.S. military installations in the Philippines; the deployment of thousands of troops; the building of new military bases across the region; expansion of military exercises; shifting of weapons—including long-range bombers and drones—to the Pacific; and increased military alliances.¶ This is in a region where there are already approximately 320,000 U.S. troops.¶ "The U.S. is trying to establish neoliberal policies," said Ramiro. "If anyone is opposed, the military will be there to back up economic plans. The militarization is also a way for the U.S. to flex its muscles around China."

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