China’s economy is soft right now, because its own consumers still are struggling with less-than-effective COVID-19 vaccines, and it is dependent on American purchases.
So the U.S. should take advantage and strive for the end of Communist rule there.
That’s from China expert Gordon Chang, author of “The Coming Collapse of China” and a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
He pointed out the Biden administration attitude is the reverse of what it should be.
He quoted Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said, “I want to be clear on this, our goal is not to hold China back. It is not to establish a policy against China.”
“Really?” Chang wrote, “The Chinese regime spread a disease that has at last count killed 604,000 Americans; last year it urged the violent overthrow of the American government; it is killing tens of thousands of Americans annually with fentanyl and related opioids; and it steals half a trillion dollars of American intellectual property every 12 months. It has even declared a ‘people’s war’ on America.”
He said America’s logical defense is that it “declare that its policy is to end the rule of China’s Communist Party.”
He pointed out the weakness in China’s finances, that its reported huge growth of gross domestic product earlier this year was “probably inflated and in any event fell below consensus estimates.”
“Tellingly, the country’s Q1 GDP registered only a 0.6% increase from the previous quarter. That figure trailed the 2.6% quarter-on-quarter growth between the third and fourth quarters of last year,” he said.
Consumer spending there, Chang said, “will not fully recover until the coronavirus pandemic passes, and that is unlikely to happen soon due to China’s barely effective vaccines.”
So it is relying now on American consumers.
“Last year, China’s merchandise trade surplus with the U.S. was 58.0% of its overall merchandise trade surplus. China, therefore, remains extraordinarily dependent on its sales to America, a circumstance that gives Washington extraordinary leverage,” he said.
Further pressure could be applied by “banning the importation of products made with forced or slave labor,” an issue that implicates Nike and Apple products, obtained from subcontractors, he said.
But he explained, “Ultimately, it is everyday purchasing decisions that fuel a hostile China. Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies has been promoting a Shopping for Victory program. A 2020 Deutsche Bank survey reported that 41% of Americans didn’t want to buy products made in China.”
He said, “China’s Communist Party runs a system where all entities are in service of the party-state. That means all Chinese entities should be treated as one and their products banned.”
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