{"id":1532667,"date":"2025-04-27T03:20:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T07:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1532667"},"modified":"2025-04-27T03:20:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T07:20:00","slug":"escobar-china-hong-kong-the-art-of-blinking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/escobar-china-hong-kong-the-art-of-blinking\/1532667\/","title":{"rendered":"Escobar: China, Hong Kong, & The Art Of Blinking"},"content":{"rendered":"

Escobar: China, Hong Kong, & The Art Of Blinking<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Authored by Pepe Escobar,<\/em><\/p>\n

So, predictably, Captain Chaos did blink first. As much as he \u2013 and his sprawling media circus \u2013\u00a0could not possibly admit it.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

It all started with \u201ctariff exemptions\u201d \u2013 from smartphones and computers to auto parts \u2013 on products imported from China. Then it veered towards carefully manicured leaks implying tariffs \u201ccould\u201d be reduced to a range between 50% and 65%. And finally a terse admission that if there\u2019s no deal, a \u201ctariff number\u201d will be unilaterally set.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Ministry of Commerce was unforgiving: \u201cTrying to trade away others\u2019 interests for temporary gains is like bargaining with a tiger for its skin \u2013 it will only backfire\u201d.<\/p>\n

And it got fiercer. The Ministry was adamant that any Trump 2.0 claims of any progress on bilateral negotiations have \u201cno factual basis\u201d \u2013 de facto depicting the US President as a purveyor of fake news.<\/p>\n

Tigers, tigers burning bright: the image does not recall poetry superstar William Blake, but Mao\u2019s legendary depiction of the US Empire as a \u201cpaper tiger\u201d \u2013 a flashback that struck me over and over again last week in Shanghai. If the US Empire was a paper tiger already in the 1960s, the Chinese argue, imagine now.<\/p>\n

And the pain will increase, not only for the paper tiger: any dodgy deals made by foreign \u2013 vassal \u2013 pussycat governments at the expense of Chinese interests simply will be not be tolerated by Beijing.<\/p>\n

Last week in Shanghai I was reminded over and over again \u2013 by academics and business people \u2013 that the weaponized Trump Tariff Tizzy (TTT) goes way beyond China: it is a desperate offense ordered by the US ruling classes against a peer competitor that scares the hell out of them.<\/p>\n

The best Chinese analytical minds know exactly what\u2019s going on in Washington. Take for instance\u00a0this essay<\/a>\u00a0originally published by the influential Cultural Horizon magazine breaking down the \u201ctriangular power structure\u201d of Trump 2.0.<\/p>\n

We have all-power Trump forming a \u201csuper-establishment\u201d; Silicon Valley money politics, represented by Elon Musk; and the new right-wing elite represented by VP J.D. Vance. End result: a \u201cgovernance system that is almost parallel to the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n

European chihuahuas \u2013 caught in the crossfire of Trump 2.0 \u2013 are simply incapable of such synthetic and precise conceptualization.<\/p>\n

Paper tiger meets fiery dragon<\/strong><\/h2>\n

What a deep dive in Shanghai has revealed is that China has been handed over a rare earth-like opportunity by Trump 2.0 to consolidate its strategic initiative solidifying the role of leader of the Global South\/Global Majority, at the same time carefully managing the risk of a New Cold War.<\/p>\n

Call it a Sun Tzu move that may paralyze the Empire in its tracks. Professor Zhang Weiwei, with whom I had the pleasure to share a seminar in Shanghai on the Russia-China strategic partnership,\u00a0would agree.<\/a><\/p>\n

China is on the move across the spectrum. Chinese Premier Li Qiang sent a letter to Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishibe urging a joint drive, right now, to counteract the tariff dementia.<\/p>\n

President Xi\u2019s top message in his Southeast Asia tour last week was to stand up against \u201cunilateral bullying\u201d.<\/p>\n

Xi deftly moved between Malaysia \u2013 current rotating chair of ASEAN, always avoiding taking sides \u2013 and Vietnam \u2013 with its \u201cbamboo diplomacy\u201d always hedging between US and China.<\/p>\n

Xi told Malaysia\u2019s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim, directly: \u201cWe must safeguard the bright prospects of our Asian family\u201d. Translation: let\u2019s create an exclusive sphere of influence close to the \u2018community of shared destiny\u2019 but that does not include outside powers such as the US.<\/p>\n

In parallel, there has been a strong debate \u2013 from Shanghai to Hong Kong \u2013 that transcends the role of China as the world\u2019s factory: what matters now is how to redirect some of China\u2019s astonishing manufacturing capacity towards the domestic market.<\/p>\n

Of course there are problems \u2013 such as the lack of purchasing power among scores of Chinese domestic consumers, even as the bulk of national China income is directed to fixed-asset investments. A great deal of China\u2019s rural elderly population survives on a monthly pension of roughly $30 a month, and the hourly rate for the gig economy has stagnated at around $4.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in several high-tech fronts, China just built the fastest high-speed train on the planet: 400km\/h, soon to run between Beijing and Shanghai. China is already receiving orders for the C919 commercial wide-bodied airliner. And China has come up with the world\u2019s first thorium-powered nuclear reactor. Translation: unlimited cheap and clean energy is at hand.<\/p>\n

The Mafia way of doing business<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Hong Kong is a very special case. HSBC executives, for instance, worry about a possible decoupling between US and China \u2013 and wonder whether Hong Kong may survive without US trade.<\/p>\n

Yes, it can. The US is Hong Kong\u2019s third largest trade partner; yet\u00a0Hong Kong\u2019s export and import to the US are only 6,5% and 4%, respectively, of its total global exports and imports, including transshipment of goods back and forth from the mainland.<\/p>\n

HK is a world-class logistics hub and free port. So as long as Trump 2.0 does not forbid trade with Hong Kong \u2013 well, anything can happen \u2013 imports should not be affected. Anyway, most of what HK exports \u2013 electronics, luxury goods, clothes, toys \u2013 can easily find alternative markets in Southeast Asia, West Asia and Europe.<\/p>\n

The crucial point is that over half of Hong Kong trade is with the mainland. And the key fact is that China can easily survive without US trade. Beijing has been carefully preparing for it since Trump 1.0.<\/p>\n

From Shanghai to Hong Kong, the best analytical minds are in tune with the inestimable Michael Hudson, who has emphasized, over and over again, how \u201cthe United States is the only country in the world that has weaponized its foreign trade; weaponized its foreign currency, the dollar; weaponized the international financial system; and treated every economic relationship in an adversarial way, to weaponize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A self-confident, high-tech savvy China, from academics and business people to xiao long bao and pulled noodles vendors, graphically understands that the Empire of Chaos, in its drive to \u201cisolate\u201d China, is only isolating itself (and its chihuahuas).<\/p>\n

Moreover it\u2019s such a joy to see Michael Hudson also referring to the same \u201cpaper tiger\u201d syndrome that I witnessed in Shanghai these past few days: \u201cWell, America has become a paper tiger financially today. It doesn\u2019t really have anything to offer except the threat of tariffs, the threat of suddenly disrupting all of the trade patterns that have been put in place over the last few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Shanghai, I heard serial implacable dismissals of the so-called \u201cMiran plan\u201d \u2013 as in the paper published last November by Trump\u2019s economic advisor \u201crestructuring the global trading system\u201d. Miran is the brain behind the Mar-a-Lago accord \u2013 whose rationale is to weaken the US dollar by forcing major economies \u2013 from China to Japan and the EU \u2013 to sell US dollar assets and swap short-term US Treasuries for 100-year bonds with zero interest.<\/p>\n

Miran\u2019s brilliant idea boils down to nations having only two options:<\/strong><\/p>\n

1.Meekly accept these US tariffs, without retaliation.<\/p>\n

2. Write cheques to the US Treasury.<\/p>\n

Zhao Xijun, co-dean of the China Capital Market Research Institute at Renmin University, destroyed the scheme succinctly: transferring money to the US Treasury like this is like \u201ccollecting protection money on the streets\u201d. Translation: that\u2019s the Mafia way, \u201ca thuggish and domineering act, merely dressed up with the lofty justification of providing public goods\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in the Grand Chessboard, Beijing keeps working steadily side by side with Russia towards a Eurasian-wide security architecture anchored on a balance of powers: it\u2019s all about the new Primakov triangle (RIC \u2013 Russia, Iran and China).<\/p>\n

Top BRICS members Russia and China will not allow the Empire to attack fellow BRICS member Iran. And support comes in more ways than one. Example: more imperial energy sanctions on Iran? China will increase imports via Malaysia, and invest even more in Iran\u2019s infrastructure, in tandem with Russia in respect to the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).<\/p>\n

In a nutshell: Captain Chaos definitely does not have the cards \u2013 which as even South Pacific penguins know, are all made in China.<\/strong><\/p>\n

*\u00a0 *\u00a0 *<\/p>\n

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 04\/26\/2025 – 23:20<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/geopolitical\/escobar-china-hong-kong-art-blinking<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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