(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



The Jamestown foundation nails it [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']

Date: 2023-04-26  

Xi Jinping Illustration by Tavis Coburn, The New Yorker

By: Willy Wo-Lap Lam

April 25, 2023

” Moreover, Xi added that “the multi-polarization of the world is developing rapidly, and the global distribution of power has become more balanced by the day,” and that “the currents and major trends of the world cannot be negated” (Netease, January 14, 2022; Sohu.com, January 19, 2018). This viewpoint was buttressed by Xi’s revival of one of his favorite Chairman Mao quotations: “The East is rising and the West is declining” (People’s Daily, November 24, 2022; Radio Free Asia, September 23, 2022).

Driving a Wedge Between the U.S. and its Allies

Xi’s tactics to divide the EU and the U.S. seem to have attained a level of beneficial results among individual European countries. During his visit to Beijing in the company of 40 top French business executives, French president Emmanuel Macron cautioned fellow European countries against becoming a “vassal” of the U.S. by embracing American standards at the expense of Europe’s own “strategic autonomy” (China Daily, April 13).

China-centric Bloc Building

The Xi Jinping leadership has spearheaded the formation of large, cross-continental trade and security blocs that testify to the PRC’s growing global clout. The biggest push on the economic front is the establishment of one of the largest trading blocs in the world, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which incorporates the ten ASEAN members as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

Conclusion: Will Xi’s “Once in a Century” Gambit Succeed?

At a time when China itself is running short of hard currency such as the U.S. dollar, it is doubtful that the Xi administration can sustain its campaign to woo the developing world through generous loans. By the end of 2021, the use of the renminbi in global trade in goods and services had shot up to 2.7 percent. Yet the proportion of world commerce transacted in U.S. dollars still remains close to 90 percent (BIS.org, December 5, 2022; Gov.cn, September 9, 2022). Given several negative factors, including rigid PRC control over foreign currency movements, Beijing still has a long way to go in its apparent effort to promote renminbi internationalization in order to bolster its role as a global finance role-setter.

This is a very detailed and well sited analysis of China’s bid to unseat the US as the world’s leading economy and the dollar as the world’s trade currency of choice. Although it is published today April 25, 2023, much of the material it sites is dated. Xi Jinping has amassed hundreds of billions of dollars of trade agreements in the past eight weeks, many of them in local currency to the yuan, export-import currencies.

The dilemma for the importing countries is the huge imbalance in the movement of goods in favor of China and the yuan. It appears, to my untrained instinct, this will drive up the demand for the yuan and result in all of these agreements eventually being consummate in yuan. China is already developing a parallel trade system including intercontinental data cables to support a non dollar dominated trading network with Singapore as the financial hub. A ten-year-old proposal to develop an all Asian version of the IMF is also being revived.

China’s moves appear opportunistic, but they are well-thought-out, and this plan appears to have been vetted and poised to come off the shelf when the right opportunity presented itself. The war in Ukraine and the end of COVID appear to be:

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/26/2165933/-The-Jamestown-foundation-nails-it

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/