Trump/Biden/Kissinger and Xi on China

[Randy W]

Meanwhile,

 

China’s trade surplus with US hits record high of US$34 billion as trade war rages on

Exports grow faster than expected in September as new US tariffs on US$200 billion of Chinese goods yet to bite, analysts say

 

 

While Washington sees its trade deficit with China as evidence of the latter’s unfair trade practices, Beijing argues it is the inevitable result of their different positions in global value chains and denies pursuing a trade surplus.

An editorial published on Thursday by People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of China’s Communist Party, said that if the US wanted to narrow the trade gap it could sell four aircraft carriers to China.

 

 

[wawster]

Ok...that's just funny right there...

Maybe we could sell them the old USS Forrestal, or as we used to call her, the USS Zippo, cos she caught fire so many times.

[Randy W]

This will definitely affect international packages sent by EMS, which is part of the Postal Union - from the SCMP

 

Donald Trump to pull US out of postal alliance in latest move targeting China

The Trump administration is rejecting a ‘flawed system’ that allows developing countries like China to globally ship goods cheaply

 

 

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) – an organisation first established in 1874 and now run by the UN – sets the rules for international mail exchange, such as determining fees that postal services within any given country can charge for delivering shipments from foreign carriers. It currently represents 192 member countries, including the US.

 

. . .

 

Rather than adhering to the fees designated by the UPU, the administration will seek to institute self-declared rates for US postal services handling international shipments.

In a statement issued after the announcement, the White House said: “The president concurs with the Department of State’s recommendation to adopt self-declared rates for terminal dues as soon as practical, and no later than January 1, 2020.”

 

[Randy W]

a follow-up from the SCMP - we pay $27 to mail a single document from China to the U.S., which includes one week ("overnight") delivery and (Chinese) door to (American) door tracking. No additional fees are charged by the destination post office.

 

China’s cheap shipping advantage explained

Washington claims global postal alliance is flawed but what is the Universal Postal Union and why does it matter?

 

 

According to the US Postal Service, it would cost around US$20 to mail a small parcel of 2kg (4.4lbs) from one US state to another, but mailing the same package from China would only cost US$5.

Trump claimed China was paying discounted rates for international delivery under the system and that was hurting the US Postal Service.

 

. . .

 

From mailing a letter to receiving an online shopping parcel, the postal rates paid are determined every four years by UPU for its membership of 192 countries.

This seemingly obscure, Swiss-based organisation coordinates rates and standards between nearly every national postal system in the world.

. . .

The UPU system divides countries into categories, based on their level of development, which determines the rates of terminal dues paid to each other. The US is classified as a “target” country and China as a “transitional” country.

. . .

China is still considered a “transitional” country by the UPU, which means it enjoys a lower rate for sending mail to a developed nation like the US.

As a result, mail services from China to the US cost less than Americans are charged by their postal service for a comparable domestic delivery.

 

[Randy W]

Some interesting reading, if you care to read through it. Otherwise, not much new. From the Economist. Reads more like a history lesson from 2000 onward.

 

We are seeing our first fallout from the trade war - the USDA Choice rib-eyes we used to buy for ¥85 per jin have been replaced with Canadian Premium Angus rib-eyes for ¥85 per jin.

 

America’s new attitude towards China is changing the countries’ relationship

It is getting more antagonistic in many ways

 

The era of closest alignment was the early 2000s, after America helped China become a member of the World Trade Organisation. China had been building up its armed forces since the Taiwan Strait crisis in 1996, when a show of naval force by President Bill Clinton brought Chinese missile tests designed to intimidate the Taiwanese to an abrupt halt. But China was not in a position to mount a serious regional challenge to America—where concern about its rapid rise was tempered by an assumption among political and business elites that the rapid expansion of its middle class would bring some measure of liberalisation. It was not just Westerners who imagined that an authoritarian China might liberalise internally and become a “responsible stakeholder”, in the phrase an American diplomat, Robert Zoellick, used in 2005. Many Chinese argued the case, too.

 

. . .

 

The second change was Mr Xi. His ascension in 2012 began what Chinese officials now call “the new era”. He celebrated and sought to entrench the state’s leading role in the post-crisis economy. He stifled dissent and tightened the authoritarian screws. His new-era China loaned vast sums to governments with dodgy records on everything from human rights to corruption and the environment. Its Belt and Road Initiative and the lending institutions that support those infrastructural ambitions, along with its talk of “reform of the global governance system”, make it plain to Mr Rudd that China is not embracing the American-led global order. It is seeking to change it—at precisely the time that America, under the anti-globalist Mr Trump, is giving up on its support.

American concern over those changes has been exacerbated by a generational shift in its bureaucracy. Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington think-tank, points out that the public servants who knew China as a poor country and saw the fruits of it opening in the 1990s are retiring. Whether they be the kindly folk who administer development aid or hard-boiled China-hands at the Pentagon or cia, the younger officials now running China policy have known only a wealthy, powerful nation breaking promises of reform. In 2014 many also saw their own sensitive data, sometimes including information about love lives, drinking habits and finances gathered for security clearances, stolen by Chinese cyber-thieves from the Office of Personnel Management. “That makes the risks personal,” says Mr Paal.

 

[amberjack1234]

You probably can't tell the difference. Unless all that cold up there has toughened them up for the winter.

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

Mike Pompeo was ‘snubbed’ by Beijing. Now it wants to show ‘a friendlier China’

• Some Chinese officials did not agree with the way US secretary of state’s visit was handled, according to person familiar with the matter
• Defence chief will seek to reassure US, Southeast Asian neighbours that China won’t become a threat in speech at security forum

 

The US secretary of state was given frosty treatment when he visited Beijing on October 8 – part of an Asia tour that also included Japan and the two Koreas – when Chinese officials were openly blunt and accused the US of escalating the trade war, the person said.

 

“Pompeo hoped to meet President Xi Jinping, but he was rejected. Then he had a meeting with Foreign Minister Wang Yi that lasted less than an hour, and Wang spent nearly the whole meeting chiding the Trump administration for ‘ceaselessly escalating’ trade tensions,” the person said.

“Wang and his team didn’t even take Pompeo for a meal after the meeting … it was very disrespectful – China is known as a country that respects etiquette and ceremony,” the person said.

“Some of the Chinese defence officials and others didn’t agree with the way Wang handled the visit and they are hoping the Xiangshan Forum will be a chance to show their foreign counterparts a friendlier China,” the person said.

 

 

[Allon]

Interesting. When Hu Jintao visited the US he was pissed that he did not get a 21 gun salute which he was entitled to being a visiting head of state, but the ceremony is rarely done anymore except for certain holidays and celebrations.

 

So he left Washington early and visited Bill Gates in Redmond on the way back to China.

[eseum]

From The Hill - Trump talks to Xi about trade:

 

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/414255-trump-talks-trade-with-chinese-president

 

"President Trump said Thursday that he spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping amid heightened trade tensions between the world's two largest economies.

Trump in a tweet described their phone conversation as "long and very good" and said they placed a "heavy emphasis" on trade.

The president indicated they would discuss the issue at next month's Group of 20 (G-20) summit of world economic powers. Such a meeting has not yet been officially announced by the White House."

[Randy W]

from the SCMP at the

 

China International Import Expo

 

 

China will buy US$40 trillion worth of imports in next 15 years, Xi says

 

• Xi says China has made long-term commitment to buy US$30 trillion worth of goods and US$10 trillion worth of services in next 15 years
• Xi backs globalisation and attacks unilateralism, but he does not single out US or Donald Trump

 

 

Xi said China’s promise to buy more products and services from abroad is “not a temporary arrangement but a long-term consideration” and that the fair would become an annual event.

The Import Expo was announced in May 2017. It will run until November 10 and has drawn 3,600 exhibitors from 172 countries and regions, Xi said.

. . .

In particular, China will protect the business interests of overseas firms doing business in China and punish those who infringe on their legal interests, especially theft of intellectual property rights, Xi said.

Xi responded to complaints about China’s business environment.

“All countries should make efforts to improve their own business environment and to solve their own problems,” Xi said. “Please don’t always beautify your own and point fingers at others – please don’t always shine a spotlight to examine others but not yourself.”

. . .

“We need cooperation, not confrontation; we need win-win, not a one-sided win,” Xi said. “The winner-takes-all mentality will only lead to a dead end”.

 

[Randy W]

I'll post a link to this article, in case you're interested in reading about the European reaction to Xi's speech - from the SCMP

 

Xi Jinping’s market opening pledges fail to impress European firms who have ‘heard it all before’

• The European Chamber of Commerce expresses disappointment that president’s speech at the China International Import Expo offered few new ideas and no timelines for enacting past promises
• Group warns that EU businesses are starting to doubt Chinese promises

[amberjack1234]

To be honest I got a little excited about the results. Then the wife shot me down. She said, "that will be great if he will do it". "He probably won't".

[Randy W]

If you're looking for a little reading material, this may fit the bill. From Settimana News - an Italian source - just one excerpt



Old Roots for Present US-China Trade War

What happened in the past ten to fifteen years was that China simply got stuck in an internal constant power tangle starting roughly with the 2002 Party Congress. After that, it was not clear who was in charge: PLA Chairman Jiang Zemin, Party Secretary Hu Jintao, some of the retired leaders, or the new Politburo members.

In the years of great confusion leading to the 2012 congress that crowned Xi Jinping as “top dog,” it was very vague how decisions were made in China and who was in charge of what. In this situation, foreign policies were very short term, not reflecting long-term changes and not thinking of the domestic implications of those changes.

It was in this time that President Xi Jinping inherited a confused mixed bag, where nobody was in charge of anything and there was no clear assessment of the international environment.

This situation presently has not much changed. China is still thinking of its crisis with the US in internal terms, according to ideas that are twenty or thirty years old. The leadership failed to see the trade war coming, and they failed to recognize their own behavior was and is being read as tantamount to a cold war.[3] They also have a possibly confused perception of their strengths and weaknesses.

In a sense, 9/11 gave China an unexpected lull of eighteen years, but the lull blinded the Chinese leadership to the real international situation. The Chinese didn’t use the lull to better understand the world – they somehow squandered it by concentrating only on themselves.


Dovetail of Internal and International affairs

This was compounded by the fact that internal changes took a dramatic turn. After 1989, the leadership had a pact with the entrepreneurs: don’t get into politics and get rich instead. Therefore, they got rich by being close to power, thus corrupting the power. But if you get rich through corrupt politics, this decreases business efficiency and destroys politics, political career that can be bought with money, and politics can blackmail business, which have no sense of long term security, a basic element for long term commitment and investment.

Moreover, if entrepreneurs can’t do business in the old way, how can they do it? Is their money safe? Can it be seized by the power turning a policy on its head? The political crisis around the fall of ex-Chongqing party chief of Bo Xilai, where money bought politics on a grand scale, and vice versa, showed the depth of the fault lines in the system. With his anti-corruption campaign, Xi focused internally and was oblivious to the atmosphere abroad. He concentrated power, but then power must be redistributed – yet how?

At this point, the US and many other countries became fed up with China, and recent events show that the US can become a real enemy – and therefore it ought to become a real friend.

For all of this, foreign affairs must return to the center of Chinese thinking before they go too far and things get out of control.

In all of this Xi, Wang Huning, and their colleagues are not innocent, but they are not the main culprits either. It was a collective euphoria that made them all to forget that even miracles have their prices. And this not according to Western tradition, but the Chinese Buddhist tradition.

[Randy W]

from the SCMP

 

‘Like pulling teeth’: In trade talks, China and US said to be far apart on structural changes by Beijing

• China has proposed parallel talks aimed at resolving Huawei CFO’s extradition case, sources say
• Reform verification mechanism could be a stumbling block in ending the trade war

“There are already significant doubts about what China is putting on the table,” one of the sources, who is familiar with negotiations, told the South China Morning Post. Over the course of trade talks, China has been recycling the same sort of offers like a “broken record”, the source said, adding that it was a “bad record” that no one on the US side wanted to listen to.

Beijing is offering only “cosmetic, non-impactful offers” on issues crucial to the US, such as industrial government subsidies, said the person, who likened the current negotiations in Beijing to “pulling teeth”.

 

 

[Randy W]

The 'Trade War' in a nutshell . . .

 

from ChinaLawBlog on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ChinaLawBlog/posts/10155836751951109

 

President Trump on China IP theft and forced technology transfers: "I was just kidding." Or as another lawyer in my firm puts it: "China buys soybeans, Trump proclaims victory, the markets rise for a few weeks and the future/credibility of the United States goes down the tubes."

 

 

and Bloomberg . . .

 

 

Trump Vents Frustration With Trade Czar as China Talks Continue

Other China hawks in the administration and in Congress, however, have been more open about their frustration.

 

They worry that, having built up considerable leverage through his tariffs, Trump has become too focused on cutting a deal to calm financial markets, and that any agreement may fail to address core issues such as intellectual property theft. The concern is that a deal could end up seeing only a short-term increase in Chinese purchases of U.S. agricultural and energy products.