Flying Dragon, Crashing Eagle
12005 Views November 23, 2020 18 Comments	Guest Analyses amarynth
by Pepe Escobar and first posted at Asia Times
Four geoeconomic summits compressed in one week tell the story of where we stand in these supremely dystopian times.
The (virtual) signing of RCEP in Vietnam was followed by the equally virtual BRICS meeting hosted by Moscow, the APEC meeting hosted by Malaysia, and the G20 this past weekend hosted by Saudi Arabia.
Cynics have not failed to note the spectacular theater of the absurd of having the Top 20 – at least in theory – economies discussing what is arguably the turning point in the world-system linked to a beheading-friendly desert oil hacienda with a 7th century mentality.
The Riyadh declaration did its best to lift the somber planetary mood, vowing to deploy "all available policy tools" (no precise details) to contain Covid-19 and heroically "save" the global economy by "advancing" global pandemic preparedness, vaccine development and distribution – in tandem with debt relief – for the Global South.
Not a peep about The Great Reset – the Brave New World scheme concocted by Herr Schwab of Davos and fully supported by the IMF, Big Tech, transnational Big Capital interests and the oh so benign Prince Charles. Meanwhile, off the record, G20 sherpas moaned about the lack of real global governance and multiple attacks on multilateralism.
And not a peep as well about the real life vaccine war between the expensive Western candidates – Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca – and the much cheaper Russia-China versions – Sputnik V and Sinovac.
What seems to be the case is that any agenda – sinister or otherwise – fits the one-size-fits-all vow by the G20 to provide "opportunities of the 21st century for all by empowering people, safeguarding the planet, and shaping new frontiers."
The House of Xi
At the G20, President Xi Jinping did not waste the chance – after RCEP, BRICS and APEC – to once again emphasize China's priorities: multilateralism, support for WTO reform, ample international cooperation on vaccine research and production.
But then, in tandem with reducing tariffs and facilitating the trade of crucial medical supplies, Xi proposed a global health QR code – a sound way to restore global travel and trade: "While containing the virus, we need to restore the secure and smooth operation of global industrial and supply chains."
Predictably, there were howls about neo-Orwellian intrusion, comparing the QR code with the exceptionally misunderstood Chinese credit system. Herr Schwab's Great Reset in fact proposes something similar, with even more neo-Orwellian overtones, disguised under an innocent "Covid Pass" app, or highly secure "health passport".
What Xi has proposed amounts to just a mutual recognition of health certificates, issued by different nations, based on nucleic acid tests. No gene altering vaccines coupled with nanochips. These QR codes, incorporated to health apps, are already used for domestic travel in China.
Chinese officials have made it very clear that Beijing has been working as the representative of the Global South inside the G20. That's multilateralism in action. And the multilateralist drive extends from RCEP – signed between 15 nations – to the brilliant Sun Tzu maneuver of China now accepting even the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the successor of the Obama-promoted and Trump-detonated TPP.
This revival – a case of Make TPP Chinese Again – can be envisaged because Beijing not only has mastered how to contain Covid-19 but is also recovering in lightning speed. China will be the only major economy growing in 2020 – de facto leading the world to a tentative post-Covid paradigm.
What the APEC meeting made crystal clear is that with East Asia graphically hitting the economic limelight, as seen with RCEP, much vaunted US "leadership" inevitably diminishes.
APEC promoted a so-called Putrajaya Vision 2040, condensing an "open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful" Asia-Pacific all the way to 2040. That neatly ties in with the three accumulated five-year Chinese plans all the way to 2035, approved last month at the CCP plenum in Beijing.
The emphasis, once again, is on multilateralism and an open global economy.
Few are more capable to capture the moment than Professor Wang Yiwei at the Institute of International Affairs at Renmin University, who wrote the best Chinese book on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Wang stresses how China is in a period of "strategic opportunity" and is now "the most powerful leader of globalization". China's emphasis on multilateralism will "activate the connectivity and vitality of a trade platform like RCEP".
Now compare all of the above with Trump at the G20 tweeting about the election dystopia and privileging golfing instead of discussing Covid-19 containment.
And then there's
The Elements of the China Challenge, the new 74-page delusional epic concocted by the office of secretary Mike "We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal" Pompeo.
Diplomatic howls comparing it with the notorious George Kennan "long telegram" that codified the containment of the USSR in the Cold War are nonsense. Chinese Foreign Ministry reaction was more to the point: this was concocted by some "living fossils of the Cold War" and is doomed to end up "being consigned to the dustbin of history".
President Xi Jinping, at RCEP, BRICS, APEC and the G20, concisely laid out the Chinese case: multilateralism, international cooperation on multiple fields, an open global economy, due representation of Global South's interests.
As we wait for a set of imponderables all the way to January 20, 2021, perhaps an angular approach to what may lie ahead for the world economy is best offered by fiction.
Enter Billions, season 5, episode 2, dialogue written by Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Axe: "You know they call us traders 'gamblers'. The world's economy is one big casino, fueled by a giant debt bubble and computer driven derivatives. And there's only one thing better than being a gambler at a casino."
Wags: "That's being the house."
Axe: "That's right. There's a systemized machine out there, sucking capital from localities and injecting it into the global markets, where it can be used to speculate and manipulate. And if something goes wrong there are bailouts and bail-ins, federal aid and easing. Where the government doesn't hunt you down, but instead gives you a nice soft net to land in."
Wags: "That's your answer to the fireside chat: You want to become a bank."
Axe: "I want to become a bank."
Wags: "In order to rob it?"
Axe: "In order that I don't have to."
amarynth on November 23, 2020 · at 1:03 pm EST/EDT
Just love it!
I've been 'preaching' this now for months, only to be faced with the Great Reset is Global cadre. They are coming to get us! And Xi Jingping is on the 'dark side'. And Putin is his 'dark side buddy'.
Purple Library Guy on December 01, 2020 · at 1:53 pm EST/EDT
There's a lot less than meets the eye to "The Great Reset"–and certainly a lot less than meets the conspiracy theorist's eye. Not that the Davos crowd aren't conspiratorial; to the contrary. The World Economic Forum traditionally brings together some of the richest people in the world plus a few heads of state and so forth so they can decide how to run our lives. The WEF is just one of a moderate number of key fora that bring together the biggest oligarchs, and over the last few decades those big oligarchs and those heads of state have collaborated to bring us neoliberal globalized capitalism and the destruction of social democracy and much of the welfare state. Not that it's exactly a SECRET conspiracy; they've done all this right in the open and tried to make us think we should be grateful for their efforts to suck up all the world's money.
Now they're staring the results in the face: The widespread poverty and desperation are causing lots of instability, the lack of demand by the poor is narrowing the base of the economy, the privatization for oligarch profit have seriously reduced the capacity of governments to deal with crisis. And they're afraid. But on the other hand, those profits, those lowered taxes, that easy money laundering, those low wages . . . they can't bring themselves to give much of that up.
So "The Great Reset" is those oligarchs saying "OK, maybe we took the whole neoliberalism thing a bit too far" and proposing bringing back a little bit of the old welfare state to try to keep a lid on things. It's too little too late and when it comes time to actually legislate stuff they won't be able to muster the will to do it because it goes against their "grab more money today at all future costs" instincts. So it's irrelevant.
SteveK9 on November 23, 2020 · at 1:20 pm EST/EDT
Why always vaccine, vaccine, vaccine, when there are good and safe treatment alternatives? $$$$$
Ultrafart the Brave on November 23, 2020 · at 5:54 pm EST/EDT
"Why always vaccine, vaccine, vaccine…?"
1. Because Big Pharma pulls all the strings, & Big Pharma just loves all that juicy profit (and there's no profit in cheap effective medicines, and there's no profit in keeping people healthy).
2. Because "vaccines" provide a fabulous opportunity to deliver Trojan Horses into the biology of an unsuspecting population.
Nussiminen on November 23, 2020 · at 1:34 pm EST/EDT
"Chinese officials have made it very clear that Beijing has been working as the representative of the Global South inside the G20."
That's exactly what lies at the heart of today's Sinophobia in the West. Amusingly, don't be surprised if China's assistance to the Global South gets slandered by the savvy folks around here as "freemasonry" (or something equally witty) like Russia's action of debt cancellation. In Putin's case, another approach would have been 100% "proof" that Russia is just as rotten, greedy, and exploitative as Western imperialism.
It's great that the Axis of Resistance has got the leaderships it has. Taking understatement to the point of caricature, it sheds interesting light upon the likes of Pompeo.
teranam13 on November 23, 2020 · at 1:43 pm EST/EDT
RE: your Appologictic for the CCP mass surveillance, control and elimination of opposition ideas: I will take this time to add my voice to howls of resistance to this techno-fascist Chi-com bureaucracy running China much like in the Soviet Union for its own benefit. Only these are the times when the old Right-Left category serves no purpose …The ruling class has internationalized itself and its alliances are not along national lines but rather along big corporation lines for the benefit of the few. As long as the Chinese middle class gets its goodies thrown to it, then it will support its 1% much like in the USA, but they are having trouble in Looneylandia these days. However China will help them deal with their working class once and for all. Bar codes, starvation wages, factory living in bunk bed cubicles etc. etc. And absolutely no chanting of Om mane padme hum. or even humming it. or even thinking it.
Think possibilities and not party-line. And include horrible possibilities also in this so-called "worker's paradise".
Oh..lovely bar codes: what could possibly go wrong?
I can tell you this—the complex system these global elites are building requires the creative maverick or it will self destruct under its own built in, self referential rigidities. Remember the corroded o-rings of the Challenger? it will be something simple in a system with zero redundancy and zero tolerance for out-of regime sanctioned thought which will create catastrophe. The physical world is above all capricious and deeply, deeply intelligent…not in an A-I intelligent way either.
Mother Nature just did a flash demonstration on the city of Vladivostok. ( see RT today). Ok. how flexible are we as humans with our systems to meet challenges like this of the ultimate Challenger yet still stay human enough to always do so? Paradox. Not Party Line.
dave on November 23, 2020 · at 3:24 pm EST/EDT
Chinese Communist Party will not allow transhumanism. The western liberal elite is seeing transhumanism as their endgoal and are promoting it also.
With regards to Chinese surveillance you are right, but you could also ask Julian Assange and Snowden about the 5 Eyes mass surveillance.
"The ruling class has internationalized itself and its alliances are not along national lines but rather along big corporation lines for the benefit of the few."
This is an enlightened observation.
It helps, to some extent, to explain how the Corona Chan con-job has been so readily swallowed by so many governments around the world.
laodan on November 23, 2020 · at 9:46 pm EST/EDT
The core of your argument centers on big corporations :
But the power over corporations resides in the minds of those who are holding the controlling stakes in the capital of these corporations. In other words the power over corporations is in the hands of big capital. The big game of the 21th century is all about who controls the investments of capital ‒ in the most advanced R&D in the world ‒ in the most advanced technologies in the world ‒ in the most integrated production chains in the world.
At this juncture we have to clarify what is the true nature of big capital. Until very recently big capital was in the hands of Western private capital holders. But the West just awoke to the fact that China's typhoon like development pushed the country over the West in term of economic size (IMF figures 2019. PPP in Trillion $US = China : 29,064, US : 21,439 ) and of R&D (Figures from "Patent applications for the top 20 offices, 2018″= China : 1,542,000 Vs US : 597,141).
What these figures indicate is that Western private capital is in the process of being overtaken by Chinese state capital. Considering that "the big game of the 21th century" is all about who controls the investments of capital we can safely conclude that this is the root cause of all the media noise and furry that we are submitted to on a daily base…
Larchmonter445 on November 23, 2020 · at 3:13 pm EST/EDT
Succinct SitRep with a brilliant example of the fixed idea from which the US suffers, in Washington and on Wall Street.
The US exists to rape and rob the rest of the world. It has lost all moral high ground and Exceptionalism.
The Hegemon is left with Covid inside its innards, debt and derivatives weighting down its corpus, while contemplating real war to do to China what the virus did not do, and missiles and guided bombs to strike Iran in order to destroy the BRI and SCO connectivity in South Asia and Middle East.
The US has nothing left to use but its blunt force. Its diplomacy is dead. Its example of democracy is in shambles. Its dollar is near worthless. Its society is set for civil war. Its leadership is literally brain-dying, aged and creatures of a death Cult.
Of course, the world turns to Xi and Putin. They are riding the horses of the future.
Pepe just shows us where they are going.
Kevin Frost on November 23, 2020 · at 5:18 pm EST/EDT
The Chinese Belt and Road initiatives have the Western forces of oligarchy worried. They know a threat when they see one. The Chinese are offering a much better deal to all those indebted client states that have suffered exploitation all along. Typically they are kept on a short leash by means of debt which enables WB/IMF micromanagement. The political and military elites are treated to generous bribes on the condition of allowing unfettered corporate access to resources while imposing a regime of austerity and privatisation, etc. But there's a new game in town: the Belt and Road deals. The new infrastructure being built by the Chinese all over Asia, Africa, and elsewhere has to be paid for, of course. This isn't for free. But the recipient governments who go into debt to get these very material goods get geese that lay golden eggs. The infrastructure that the Chinese are building yield all sorts of taxes, profits, sales, and rents as a matter of course, and on an ongoing basis, as they were designed to do. That's how they did it in America back in the day. Way back when, the railroads were endowed with lands adjacent the lines they were committed to build. When they built these lines that land became very, very valuable – and to this day. Whoever owns this land has tremendous opportunities to make sales, rents, leases, and in the case of the government, taxes. What this does is enable the host government to generate an income. This is what drives the Western leadership to foam at the mouth. A government with a source of income is a government that is no longer vulnerable to the neoliberal management of the WB/IMF and such. So when the Chinese speak of 'win/win' deals, the Western agencies sink further into consternation. Their aim was always 'we win, you lose'. It's not something they can openly speak about and thus must retreat further and further into the idiocies of propagandistic rhetoric. So main point again: these infrastructure projects do not just signify economic development but more. They have definite political consequences. The Chinese are positioning Third World governments to become independent of Western debt entrapments and thus managed subordination. The Chinese government is evidently quite content to deal with independent governments. This is a strategy, the real deal. It's very simple, but so much so that people don't get it. Many of us have these crude 'king of the mountain' ideas of national interest and strategy. We're often missing what's in plain view.
Kapricorn4 on November 23, 2020 · at 8:54 pm EST/EDT
Thank you for your positive contribution to the discussion. However, your thinking is too conventional :-) The Chinese government does not actually need a monetary income, since it can create the Chinese money supply digitally without incurring debt, and it does this in order to put its population to productive work. In doing so, it reduces unemployment and creates infrastructure essentially free of charge. All industrial costs are actually labor costs apart from what would have been corporate profits. Money is just the lubricant in this endeavor, not an end in itself.
The main reason that China needed foreign exchange reserves in the past was to buy crude oil from the Middle East, priced in US dollars. But now it can buy from Iran and Russia in rials and rubles exchanged directly for their own yuan currency. Getting rid of accumulated Federal Reserve notes is now somewhat of a problem, since what can they spend them on ?
I suppose I was insufficiently clear. The great good of the income stream proceeding from Belt and Road infrastructure projects accrues to the recipient nation states that contract the Chinese govt. for these projects. They are the ones who badly need revenue streams. The constant policy of the West for many generations has been to seize hold of the surplus chains, as the Marxists conceive these things, depriving the political leaders of the former colonial country of any practical way to enact a real developmental policy. Actually it works that way in the West to. Everywhere governments are starved of income from taxation mainly as so much is 'owed' to banks which is essentially a hijacking of public taxation for private gain. Otherwise I do take your points and agree with what you say, or at least I think I do. My guide in these matters is Michael Hudson.
Kapricorn4 on November 24, 2020 · at 12:45 am EST/EDT
I also have great respect for Michael Hudson.
But here again all sovereign countries need to take back the right of money creation from private banks, who just conjure it out of thin air as data entries on their computers, that the borrowers have to pay back to the banks with hard earned money from their labor, plus compound interest. The only function of taxation would then be to delete some of it back out of existence as appropriate in order to control the rate of inflation.
Johny Conspiranoid on November 24, 2020 · at 5:30 am EST/EDT
If all the money is created in the form of a loan at interest then the total amount of money owed must always be bigger than the total amount of money in existance.
Kapricorn4 on November 24, 2020 · at 6:47 am EST/EDT
This is why, under the system of fractional reserve lending, the total debt, whether private or government owed, is expanding exponentially, since more money must be constantly created to pay the compound interest to the banks, also created as debt such that:
no debts = no money
The rate of inflation of the US dollar therefore approximates the weighted average annual interest rate.
kiwiklown on November 23, 2020 · at 7:07 pm EST/EDT
The Davos Dogs bark rudely while the OBOR caravan marches on.
While the West spout empty words at the G20, nobody notices how the G6 has slouched into obscurity. Western leaders increasingly sink into ineffectual word games while their people quarrel over minutae.
Meanwhile, Xi and Putin speak increasingly bold words to "ensure" equal opportunity for the Rest Of The World. These are men used to having their words come true, supported by an army of motivated assistants selected for intelligence, character, competence (not "diversity").
As Putin said, America is a great nation, but please leave us alone. I think he was being sarcastic, but it is true we don't need more American planes and missiles.
To be left in peace for an equal place at the starting line in the race to build a better future is all the world asks.
Grow Rice, Not War
Rubicon on November 25, 2020 · at 8:21 pm EST/EDT
"Limes" is an Italian production whose attentions are on worldwife "geo-political strategies, with the main emphasis on "global strategies."
In one map it shows the strangehold constructed/maintained by the US. You see the pivotal points where global trade that goes through the Hormuz Channel and many others 'round the world. Invariably, you see HOW the US maintains these: their Military (Naval/Air/Bases) are ALWAYS near by. The result: the US shall maintain its supremacy because it controls the sea/water ports.
They also show the growing trade being developed by China, and Russia. What becomes immediately evident is that these connections are ALL land-based…… WHEN/IF China/Russia will eventually throw chinks into these ports/channels, the US "empire" will start to whither away.
Such is the importance of navel/military posts that surround those key ports-of-call.
To date, China purchased the Greek "Piereaus" port and they're trying to capture the very important port of Trieste in Italy.
My question is this: has Pepe Escobar ever explored this eventuality? If not, why not?