Social, Political and Economic Forces in Global Finance
China the Sleeping Giant
In many ways, the story of the Chinese economic miracle can be traced back to a speech of Bill Clinton’s on the 9th of March 2000 at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University.
In the speech, Clinton campaigned for China’s entry to the World Trade Organisation, claiming that the U.S. designation of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) was appropriate for China, 11 years after the massacre of students at Tiananmen Square. The thoughts at the time were that ‘A Vote against PNTR will cost America jobs’, but of course Clinton couldn’t resist considering even higher ideals — that introducing China to membership in the World Trade Organisation would ‘create positive change in China’. What a guy.
Economically, he said the deal was ‘the equivalent of a one-way street. It requires China to open its markets…to both our products and services in unprecedented new ways. All we have to do is to agree to maintain the present access which China enjoys.’
Despite this blind appeal to a natural American exceptionalism that enables no risk deals, it was also (somehow) about ‘our fundamental values…the way the global economic system must move. Trade must not be a race to the bottom’ — you wouldn’t want to betray your fundamental values and torpedo the global economic system, would you?
In the same speech, Clinton acknowledges China as ‘a one-party state that does not tolerate opposition. It does deny citizens fundamental rights of free speech and religious expression. It does defend its interests in the world, and sometimes in ways that are dramatically at odds from our own. But the question is not whether we approve or disapprove of China’s practices.’ However, ‘the danger of a weak China, beset by internal chaos and the old nightmares of disintegration, is also real’
You could be forgiven for wondering where Bill was going with this.
The entire speech (here) is a fascinating insight in to the increasingly powerful globalist movement that was becoming mainstream at the time. It is full of the global liberal eschatology, the false confidence of an ‘end of history’ culture, driven by a romantic ideal of governance inspired by Rousseau on the engine of neo-liberalism. This neo-Christian thought was (and is) used so cynically by politicians as well as the corporate world as moral authority. So cynically that Clinton’s words essentially amount to this: — We have a moral duty as the world’s exceptions to get extremely rich in China.
Up until 1992, Deng Xiaoping had campaigned for China with an unusual catchphrase for a communist, that ‘To get rich is glorious’. In a speech to the UN, he also spoke out against superpowers (US and USSR) who ‘create[d] their own antithesis…the…big bullying the small, the strong domineering over the weak and the rich oppressing the poor’. Xiaoping’s speech to the UN in 1974 is prescient given the events that unfolded for the Western World, a speech being given within the timeline of the Vietnam War. He identified internal cultural issues for the United States that have created social, political and economic vulnerabilities and the superpowers’ hegemonic instincts being ‘outwardly strong but inwardly feeble’.
Finally speaking on the Chinese state and future, that ‘China is a socialist country, and a developing country as well…The Chinese government and people firmly support all oppressed peoples and oppressed nations in their struggle to win or defend national independence…China is not a superpower, nor will she ever seek to be one…If one day China should change her colour and turn into a superpower, if she too should play the tyrant in the world, and everywhere subject others to her bullying, aggression and exploitation, the people of the world should identify her as social-imperialism (which he defines in detail), expose it, oppose it and work together with the Chinese people to overthrow it.’ His entire speech can be found here.
What is clear above and beyond the contradictions of both of these world leaders, both Bill Clinton and Deng Xiaoping denied China the same respect Napoleon Bonaparte gave her in his quote that ‘China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.’ Perhaps they didn’t have the same familiarity of social and cultural mechanisms as Napoleon’s Imperialistic world.
Fast forward to today, and it is checkmate Napoleon. Deng Xiaoping and Bill Clinton underestimated the sleeping giant.
Author: Thomas Kuhn CFA, Mine Digital
www.minedigital.exchange
