If the US really acts wildly on China over the Ukraine issue, Chinese people will just face it
China-US ties in uncertainty for next 10 years, hit by Russia-Ukraine conflict: observers
As the Russia-Ukraine conflict aggravated bloc confrontation and has impacted China-US relations, bilateral ties will likely remain in "a turbulent state of uncertainty" for the next five to 10 years until the power comparison of the two countries becomes more balanced, Chinese foreign policy scholars said at the 2023 Global Times Annual Conference.
Russia-Ukraine conflict is not only the biggest international political event this year, but the biggest since the end of the Cold War. It has crippled the very foundation of the American system, Jin Canrong, associate dean of the School of International Studies at the Renmin University of China, said when addressing the 2023 Global Times Annual Conference.
Answering the question at the conference as to what impact the Russia-Ukraine conflict has had on China-US relations, Jin said "it will certainly have an impact on China-US relations, but to what extent it will have an impact is hard to judge as the conflict remains ongoing and will probably last two or three more years."
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has shocked the very foundation of the American system, a system that we have to admit we have lived under since the end of the Cold War. But the US is not what it used to be, Jin told the audience.
"The US is not in its prime of life, no longer the protagonist of movies like 007 who are handsome, elegant, quick in its action and reaction. Today's US is like a mafia boss in his later years, can barely walk but still holds particularly large power. Today, US' position is largely determined by its system," Jin said.
Jin noted that the US system creates a world market system, full of opportunities, which lures people in and then controls them by all means. On the surface, financial hegemony, high-tech monopoly, pricing power, international rules, procedures, media appear to be under US control, but in fact, violence is its basic method used in controlling the world.
PLA Navy rear admiral Yang Yi said at the annual conference that as time goes by, maybe 10 years later when the China-US power comparison becomes more balanced, bilateral relations may shift toward a relatively stable status.
Yang said the dirty tricks used by the US to contain China are useless. "They cannot stop China's development, nor can they stop the narrowing of gap between China's comprehensive national strength and that of the US."
Some other experts shared their opinions on the China-US relations. They agreed that the China-US relation is still a bilateral question but it must be seen as part of a larger global confrontation, under the influence of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
He Weiwen, a former senior trade official and an executive council member of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies, said that under the strong push of the US, the world has been divided into two camps: Western and non-Western groups.
"Since the Russia-Ukraine conflict broke out, the US has maliciously tied China and Russia up. Washington used sandbox maneuvers and planned to impose crippling sanctions on China, as it has on Russia. The reason why it has not been implemented is that the US has no grip on China," He noted.
The Russia-Ukraine crisis has brought back and highlighted bloc politics confrontation with the US and NATO on the same line and those disapproving them in the other side, said Fang Ning, a research fellow at the Institute of Political Science from Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Geopolitical factors have been placed in an unprecedented important position in bilateral relations which may lead to major confrontation. "Despite that the bottom line for the two sides is to avoid moving toward major confrontation, I have doubts over how much risk will be mitigated," said Huang Renwei, executive vice dean of Fudan Institute of Belt and Road & Global Governance.
The Ukraine crisis has become a trap for both the US and China on the Taiwan question. The US is worried about the recurrence of what happened in Ukraine and has accelerated military aid to the island while China is alert to a series of US' provocations on the Taiwan question, Huang said.
Fang pointed out the biggest effect of the crisis on China is that it added uncertainty to the national reunification. "Countries and regions around the Taiwan Straits including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam are assessing the question, choosing sides and even taking action as we can see Japan has made the quickest reaction."
Yang Xiyu, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times annual conference that the saying "today's Ukraine is tomorrow's Taiwan" has become very popular in the West but the fact is that Ukraine and Taiwan are two completely separate and fundamentally different issues.
Yang said the National Defense Authorization Act that passed on December 15 by US Senate proposes to learn from the model of Ukraine, improve the so-called resilience of the Taiwan military by means of military aid, military training and intelligence support, and strengthen the island's so-called self-defense capability against the People's Liberation Army.
Yang also believes the Russia-Ukraine crisis will have a profound influence on China-US relations in the future. He explained that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine comes at a time when the original European security order has failed, and the new order has not yet emerged. Different outcomes of the conflict will lead to different security orders and security rules in Europe, which will inevitably spill over into the international community.
Shen Dingli, a professor from Fudan University's Institute of International Studies, said although China hopes that the bilateral relationship will move toward common cooperation, the fact is that relations between China and the US are highly strained and heading toward unprecedented, multi-dimensional and large-scale competition.
"Over the next five to 10 years, the relationship between China and the US will remain in a turbulent state of uncertainty," Shen said.
China's US Treasury holdings fell to a 12-year low in October, marking the second straight month of cuts and
leaving its holdings below $1 trillion for the sixth straight month, latest data showed.
The US Federal Reserve will hold a new policy meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the decision on interest rate growth being the limelight. It is widely anticipated that the Fed will deliver at least another 75-basis-point interest rate hike to tame inflation. This might further increase the value of the US dollar against other currencies, which is at its 20-year high. Driven by the Fed's aggressive rate hikes, the US dollar is viewed as "experiencing a once-in-a-generation rally." For many countries in the world, this might be the beginning of another nightmare.
The meeting will witness the fifth time that the Fed will raise interest rates. The direct reason is to ease the high pressure of inflation in the US. But if people dig the root cause, this is an inevitable consequence of US' blind and unlimited money printing to temporarily maintain "prosperity." In other words, in the face of the deep-seated problems exposed by the 2008 financial crisis, Washington has been powerless, and unwilling as well, to solve them. Instead, it was extremely short-sighted to cover up the crisis and curry favor with the Wall Street, while taking advantage of the hegemony of the US dollar to quietly treat the crisis like dumping wastewater - draining it to the world.
A super strong US dollar and the fall of other currencies will, to a certain extent, ease the scorching inflation in the US economy, but the world will have to pay for it, which is often referred to as "when the US is sick, the world has to takes pill." The ensuing severe inflation, economic recession and other problems have already appeared on a large scale in many countries. Thirty-six currencies around the world have lost at least one-tenth of their value this year, with the Sri Lankan rupee and Argentine peso falling by more than 20 percent, since the dollar strengthened.
This has not only worsened the already weak economies of Europe and Japan, but also forced a large number of developing countries to swallow the bitter pills of the economic recession caused by imported inflation. Countless families were impoverished overnight. This is a very abnormal situation that is not supposed to occur, but it is the cruel truth behind the US "containment of inflation."
In fact, since the end of World War II, the US has used dollar hegemony to carry out "financial looting" or "export crises" against other countries several times. As a widely popular phrase in the West goes, the US enjoys the exorbitant privileges created by the dollar and the deficit without tears, and used the worthless paper note to plunder the resources and factories of other nations.
Each round of dollar appreciation in the past decades has been accompanied by extremely bad memories: The Latin American debt crisis broke out in the first round, Japan suffered from the "lost two decades" during the second round and the Asian financial crisis took place during the third. Particularly in the Asian crisis, which is still fresh in many people's memories, more than 100 million middle-class people in Asia fell into poverty, according to the World Bank estimation. The strengthened dollar, time and again, cuts the world like a sharp blade.
Therefore, while the political elites in Washington boast of the "myth of the American system" and take credit for "alleviating the crisis," thousands of poor families around the world are being trampled by them. They are not unaware of this, but still collectively choose to be indifferent and arrogant, as if this is the privilege that the "hegemon" should enjoy. As US former treasury secretary John Connally put it in the 1970s, "The dollar is our currency, but it's your problem." Today, the dollar is once again the world's problem. In a sense, it's hard to believe that the "prosperity" of the US is clean and moral.
However, the crisis cannot be covered up forever. Washington keeps laying mines but never removes them, which will eventually explode the US itself. The incompetence of US financial policymakers has been exposed by the consecutive interest rate hikes that have contributed to the abnormal appreciation of the US dollar with the purpose of defusing the severe inflation.
For the US itself, what will rise accordingly are the cost of corporate financing, the pressure on residents to repay their loans, and the price of export production among others. Meanwhile, the credibility that the US dollar has as a global currency is being continuously exhausted by the US "beggar-thy-neighbor" policy. Now the anxiety and insecurity brought by the US dollar to the world has heralded the beginning of the decline of its hegemony - regarding Washington's insatiable exploitation, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and other regions have explored the path of "de-dollarization," leading to the inevitable diversification of the international monetary system.
The best way to restrain the rampaging hegemony is to practice true multilateralism. Whether it was the Asian financial crisis in 1997 or the global financial crisis in 2008, the world seemed to have stumbled more than once by the same stone, which, however, is not that firm anymore. The instability and fragility of international financial markets have once again become prominent. It is precisely at such times that the international community should be more determined to cooperate and build a reliable, systemic and long-term multilateral international financial system. This cannot wait.
Why the US Needs to Destroy Russia and China — The Need for Bretton Woods III
The United States of America is in big trouble, short term and long term. In 2022, the stock market is crashing, bond market is down the most in 40 years, housing bubble is bursting, inflation is skyrocketing, debt is exploding, and GDP is shrinking. These are not temporary crises. Instead, they reveal systemic flaws in the American economy that is propped up by a rigged global financial system.
However, that fraudulent system is starting to crumble and the primacy of US dollar is in serious trouble, thanks to an emerging multipolar world. (Don't believe the nonsense that the US can keep printing infinite amount of dollars).
US central government’s debt is now $31 trillion, amounting to 130% of GDP. Soon, the interest payments on the debt alone will be $1 trillion per year. Of course, the principal amount will never get paid off. Then, add in the unfunded liabilities — like future payments for social security — the debt is staggering over $200 trillion.
Furthermore, there are not enough buyers of US treasuries. Thus, since the 2008 financial crisis, the Federal Reserve Bank has been
creating trillions of dollars literally out of thin air and buying the US debt (treasury bonds). This is voodoo economics and not sustainable.
What’s the end game? The US needs to default on its debt and start new. The goal is to declare bankruptcy and … yet remain the #1
country. This will be the “Bretton Woods III” agreement.
The US needs to default on its debt and start new. Declare bankruptcy and yet remain the #1 country. This will be the "Bretton Woods III" agreement.
Sounds ridiculous? Well, it's possible only if all the other countries are weak and nobody is strong enough to challenge the US.
This is why the US must not only crush Russia and China — its two biggest geopolitical rivals, but also weaken Europe. This paves the way for the US to establish a new global order which is similarly rigged and just as deceitful and corrupt — in order to prolong the American Century.
Dollar Hegemony
America's extraordinary power comes from the power of US dollar, which is the established global currency for trade. This also means that countries around the world have to accumulate US dollars in their foreign exchange reserves. But the US has been abusing its power by weaponizing the dollar through sanctions and confiscations of hard-earned reserves.
No wonder that China, Russia and others are seeking ways to circumvent the dollar in trade. Since 1999, the share of US dollar assets in central bank reserves has dropped by 12 percentage points—from 71 percent. Hence the share of US dollar in global reserves is now only 59%. When that number falls below 50%, the tectonic shifts in global finance will become more apparent to Americans.
To fully grasp the nature of the current world order, let's see how the US established the dollar as the world currency, carried about the biggest gold heist in human history, then defaulted on its obligations, but revived the moribund dollar with a clever deal. That's the story of Bretton Woods I and II.
Bretton Woods I - Gold-backed Dollar
WW2 was a wonderful thing for the US. First, it took the US economy out of the Great Depression. The US played the role of arms supplier and gladly watched European empires destroy themselves. Even before the war was over, the US brought in all the allies to Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and said, "When the war is over, you will all be weak and broke. I will be the new empire and my dollar will be the global currency. And it will be as good as gold -- a guaranteed rate of $35 per ounce of gold."
This meant that if you have $35, you can go to a bank and get an ounce of gold!
The world agreed. When the war was over, everyone bought US dollar with gold and used it for trade. Huge amounts of gold were also physically transferred from Japan, Germany and other parts of the world into the vaults of the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.
This system worked until 1971 when the US suddenly declared that, "Oops, the dollar is not backed by gold anymore. If you have US dollars, they are just pieces of paper now. You cannot get your gold back!" People called it the "Nixon Shock."
1970s - When Fiat Dollar almost died
This was also the biggest gold theft in human history. But what could the world do? America had nuclear weapons and the mightiest military.
Of course, the switch to a fiat currency caused havoc. The value of US dollar fell precipitously and inflation skyrocketed. Oil price quickly doubled and grew five-fold by 1979. The oil shock and gas shortage rocked American politics.
The US economy was in deep trouble. That's when the US elites came up with a clever idea to rescue the dollar and restore its primacy.
Bretton Woods II - The Birth of Petrodollar
How to make the dollar relevant? Hmm...What if everyone needed US dollar to buy something essential?
Like ... OIL. Brilliant!
This was the birth of Petrodollar.
Basically, the U.S. used Saudi Arabia’s oil to save the dollar. That is, Saudi Arabia (and other smaller producers) would sell oil only for US dollars. And to make sure that the Saudis don't get too powerful, they will be forced to recycle most of their profits back into the US economy. It was also a protection racket, which meant the US military would occupy Saudi Arabia and protect it from enemies.
Saudi King Faisal with Kissinger. Birth of Petrodollar
But why would the Saudis agree to this? Because the U.S. make Saudi Arabia the new king of oil and the most influential Middle East power ... after crippling Iran.
Win-win for the US.
Thus, the U.S. armed and funded Saddam Hussein of Iraq to wage a decade-long war on Iran. US provided arms/intelligence. Germany and France provided deadly chemical/biological weapons to Iraq. Here’s Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam in 1983.
Of course, the same Rumsfeld would bomb Iraq and kill Saddam twenty years later.
Thus, the Petrodollar deal with Saudi Arabia could be called as Bretton Woods II. It extended the life of the American Empire by a few more decades.
Bretton Woods III -
For the last four decades, countries around the world have been foolishly working hard for US dollars, buying US treasuries, and funding the American Empire. But within the next decade, those U.S. treasury bills and bonds might be worthless. Deja vu all over again.
The U.S. needs Bretton Woods, Version 3. Somehow, the world needs to write off all American debt and start the racket anew. But … with America still as #1 How the hell could this happen?? This is how:
If the world is full of weak countries, they will accept the new rules -- just like they did in 1944 and 1974. Imagine a world where Russia and Europe destroy one another. Imagine a world where Japan and India attack China … and they all get destroyed. A world on fire, destroyed by passion and bombs.
In that world, America will come in as the savior at the last moment, stop the war, and make everyone a happy vassal.
Great Reset. Bretton Woods III. New World Order. Call it what you will.
Conclusion
The wheels are in motion. After eight years of provocation, the US successfully forced Russia to invade Ukraine. And the US also brilliantly pulled Europe into the mess. Europe's economy is being crushed and de-industrialized.
As for China, the U.S. is trying its best to start a war using Taiwan as the pawn. Japan is being asked to re-militarize and procure 1000 long-range missiles. The US needs a few more years to manufacture this mother of all wars. A lot depends on India, since Japan wouldn't want to be the only Asian country to attack China.
Four years ago, I predicted all this in the article "The Most Dangerous Decade." However, much of the world is still happy to be mesmerized and led into the slaughterhouse.
Only Russia and China can change how this story evolves. If Putin can quickly and decisively win the Ukraine war, he can force a peace settlement with Europe.
And China needs to accelerate the internationalization of Yuan. There is no de-dollarization without a robust alternative financial system. China also needs to muster the greatest diplomatic efforts to make peace with Japan and India, the two most potent adversaries and puppets of the US.
In the most optimistic scenario, the Global South or the people of the developing nations can bring into fruition a new fair world without catastrophic wars or financial devastation. As Sun Tzu said, "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."
Brent Neiman, a counselor
to US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, urged China to "take part in
coordinated debt relief for vulnerable nations to avoid the specter of a
systemic sovereign-debt crisis," Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.
Companies attending the 7th China-Eurasia
Expo in Urumqi, Northwest China's Xinjiang region said the increased
use of the yuan in cross-border trade in Central Asia is making business
more convenient and reducing foreign exchange risks stemming from the
use of the US dollar, and they called for more arrangements to ...
U.S. is True Empire of Hacking, Surveillance, Theft of Secrets
The US: Empire of Hacking, Surveillance and Theft of Secrets.
As a hacking empire, the US disguises itself as a hacking victim
The email system of a university in Northwest China's Shaanxi Province - well-known for its aviation, aerospace and navigation studies - was found to have been attacked by the US' National Security Agency (NSA), the Global Times learned from a source on Monday.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to the issue at Monday's press briefing, saying that China has lodged a strong protest to the US over NSA's attack and demanded an explanation for it.
On June 22, Northwestern Polytechnical University announced that hackers from abroad were caught sending phishing emails with Trojan horse programs to teachers and students at the university, attempting to steal their data and personal information.
A police statement released by the Beilin Public Security Bureau in Xi'an the next day said that the attack attempted to lure teachers and students into clicking links of phishing emails with Trojan horse programs, with themes involving scientific evaluation, thesis defense and information on foreign travel, so as to obtain their email login details.
To probe into the attack, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center and internet security company 360 jointly formed a technical team to conduct a comprehensive technical analysis of the case.
By extracting many trojans samples from internet terminals of Northwestern Polytechnical University, under the support of European and South Asian partners, the technical team initially identified that the cyberattack to the university was conducted by the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) (Code S32) under the Data Reconnaissance Bureau (Code S3) of the Information Department (Code S) of US' NSA.
TAO is the largest and most important part of the intelligence division of the NSA. Founded in 1998, the main responsibility of TAO is to use the internet to secretly access to insider information of its competitors, including secretly invading target countries' key information infrastructure to steal account codes, break or destroy computer security systems, monitor network traffic, invade privacy and steal sensitive data, and gain access to phone calls, emails, network communications and messages.
The various departments of TAO are composed of more than 1,000 active military personnel, network hackers, intelligence analysts, academics, computer hardware and software designers, and electronics engineers. The entire organizational structure consists of one "center" and four "divisions."
The Global Times learned from the source that the attack was code-named "shotXXXX" by the NSA. Directly involved in the command and action mainly includes the head of TAO, remote operations center (mainly responsible for operational weapons platforms and tools to enter and control target system or network) and infrastructure task division (mainly responsible for development and build a network infrastructure and security monitoring platform for attacks)
In addition, four other divisions were also involved in the operation: the advanced/access network technology division, the data network technology division, and the telecommunications network technology division, which provided technical support, and the requirements and location division, which determined the attack strategy and intelligence assessment.
The Global Times learned from the source that at that time, TAO was headed by Rob Joyce. Born September 13, 1967, he attended Hannibal High School and graduated from Clarkson University with a bachelor's degree in 1989 and Johns Hopkins University with a master's degree in 1993. He joined the NSA in 1989 and served as Deputy Director of TAO from 2013 to 2017. He began serving as Acting US Homeland Security Advisor in October 2017. From April to May 2018, he served as the State Security Advisor to the White House, and then returned to the NSA as the Senior Advisor to the Director of Cybersecurity Strategy of the NSA. He now serves as the Director of Cybersecurity.
The investigation also found that in recent years, TAO has conducted tens of thousands malicious attacks against targets in China, controlling large numbers of network devices (web server, internet terminals, network switches, telephone switches, routers, firewalls, and etc.) to steal a high value of more than 140 GB of data.
Technical analysis also found that TAO had acquired the management authority of a large number of communication network equipment in China with the cooperation of several large and well-known internet enterprises in the US before the attack began, which made it easy for the NSA to continuously invade the important information network in China.
Aiming at Northwestern Polytechnical University, TAO used 41 types of weapons to steal the core technology data including key network equipment configuration, network management data, and core operational data. The technical team discovered more than 1,100 attack links infiltrated inside the university and more than 90 operating instruction sequences, which stole multiple network device configuration files, and other types of logs and key files, the source said.
It was found that 13 people from the US were directly involved in the attack and more than 60 contracts and 170 electronic documents that the NSA signed with American telecom operators through a cover company to build an environment for cyberattacks, according to the source.
The Global Times also learned from the source that TAO has used 54 jumpers and proxy servers in the network attack against Northwestern Polytechnical University, which were mainly distributed in 17 countries such as Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Poland and Ukraine, 70 percent of which are located in the countries surrounding China, such as Japan and South Korea.
Apart from the cyberattack, the US has also conducted surveillance of Chinese mobile users, illegally stealing their text messages and wirelessly locating them, which seriously endangered China's national security and violated the personal data security of its nationals, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday, urging the US to immediately stop its wrongdoings.
"What I want to stress it that, cyberspace security is a common problem faced by all countries worldwide. The US, with the world's most powerful cyber technology, should refrain from using such advantages to steal secrets from other countries, and should instead participate in global cyberspace governance in a responsible manner, and play a constructive role in maintaining cybersecurity," Mao said.
For a long time, the NSA has been carrying out secret hacking activities against China's leading enterprises in various industries, governments, universities, medical institutions, scientific research institutions and even important information infrastructure operation and maintenance units related to the national economy and people's livelihood.
A latest cybersecurity report released by Anzer, a cybersecurity information platform, on June 13 showed that the US military and government cyber agencies have remotely stolen more than 97 billion pieces of global internet data and 124 billion phone records in the last 30 days, which are becoming a major source of intelligence for the US and other "Five Eyes" countries.
a new vulnerability attack weapon platform deployed by the NSA, which experts believe is the main equipment of TAO, and it targets the world with a focus on China and Russia. The US' move raised wide suspicions that the country might be preparing for a bigger cyberwar, experts noted.
Learn hacking from Marcus Hutchins - the man who saved the Internet from the WannaCry ransomware. He saved the NHS. He saved countless companies. He was seen as a hero, but was charged by the FBI for his past. He now teaches you how to hack networks so you can protect companies and yourself from malicious actors.
Photo: Global Times 
