The World Should Support Trump's Naming, Shaming and Action against China's Unfair Trade Policies, Currency Manipulation and Military Takeover of the South China Sea

We are coming down to the wire on the Obama presidency, and China seems to have moved on already. • • • CHINA WARNS TILLERSON AND TRUMP. An angry China media warned incoming US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to watch his mouth, menacing President-Elect Donald Trump's nominee that his threats to block China in the South China Sea are fighting words. The comments came after Tillerson told US Senators that he would seek to deny Beijing access to the artificial islands it has been building in the South China Sea, telling the Senators that China's actions in the region are comparable to Russia's invasion of Crimea. The comment that did not sit well with nuclear-armed China. If Tillerson acts on his threats, the Chinese state-owned China Daily warned : "It would set a course for devastating confrontation between China and the US." • Under President Obama, the US has claimed that China's activities in the region threaten freedom of navigation and overflight through the commercially and strategically vital waters. But, Obama has not taken a position on the ownership of the islets, reefs, and shoals that sit in one of the world's hottest hotspots. Tillerson, however, explicitly said the territories "are not rightfully China's." The Chinese Global Times said in an editorial : "Unless Washington plans to wage a large scale war in the South China Sea, any other approaches to prevent Chinese access to the islands will be foolish." The paper, which often has insight into the thinking of the Chinese Communist Party, added that Tillerson better "bone up on nuclear power strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories." It was the Global Times that had called on China to increase its nuclear arsenal after Trump threatened to change decades of US policy on Taiwan by suggesting he could recognize Taiwan, which China regards as an indisputable part of its sovereign territory. Official China reaction to Trump's comments was less bellicose then, with foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang quietly urging Washington to mind its own business. And now, both the Global Times and the China Daily, despite their warnings, agree that it is too early to tell whether Tillerson's words were more bark than bite. The China Daily said : "It remains to be seen to what extent his views against China will translate into US foreign policies." The Global Times wrote that China is putting the comments aside for now, but : "if Trump's diplomatic team shapes future Sino-US ties as it is doing now, the two sides had better prepare for a military clash." • THE VIEW FROM BRITAIN. The UK's Spectator wrote a piece last week about President Turmp's trade policies toward China, saying : "It’s a mistake to think of Donald Trump as a protectionist...Trump's use of the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to combat Chinese mercantilism is not protectionism. Nor is his promise to declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Free trade is defended because it can be mutually beneficial but, rather like toleration, it only works if everyone plays by the same rules. Toleration of aggressively intolerant groups gives them an advantage. In the same way, free trade only makes everyone eventually better off if we are all looking for mutual benefits. The outcome will not be beneficial to everyone if one nation treats trade as a kind of substitute for war and aims to gain advantage at the expense of others in order to achieve economic and military superiority. Historically, this attitude was called mercantilism." The Spectator goes on to say : "The aim of the [Chinese] system is to bolster the power of the Communist party, a brutal authoritarian dictatorship. This is the exact opposite of America, where private wealth helps to empower opposition to the government of the day. For example, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, recently bought the Washington Post newspaper, which campaigned against Donald Trump. If he had tried to do the same thing in China he would be lucky to still be alive. There is not the slightest chance in China of building up a media group to criticise the government, let alone to create a viable government in waiting. It’s true that money can be used in America to cajole public opinion and ‘buy’ votes, but not just for one party. In the West, wealth upholds freedom and democracy. China is not a free society. The more economically powerful it gets, the more it threatens the free world. If its firms are not state owned, they are state dominated. There is no genuine private ownership; there is state authorised discretion. The aim of economic activity is to keep power in the hands of the Communist party. There are no checks and balances. The more we promote Chinese prosperity at our own expense the more we endanger liberty itself." Then, addressing currency manipulation, the Spectator says : "Currency manipulation is a longstanding problem....No one who advocates free trade should ignore this problem. Some economists talk as if world prices are the result of competition between independent organisations in a rules-based system, when they are not....The problem is not just low-wage competition. Chinese cheating also takes market share from low-wage countries. Today the problem we face in the West is not competition from low-wage economies but mercantilism, and the challenge is how to make a reality of the rules-based order we have....It is misleading to portray free trade and protection as the only two alternatives. The top priority is to act against nations with long-standing trade surpluses that are the result of mercantilist manipulation....The reality is that no company in China is genuinely private. Any chief executive who fails to comply with the wishes of the Communist party will soon find the secret police calling. Any significant private organisation in China can only function with a political patron. Letting Chinese companies take over UK businesses is like letting the Chinese government take them over....The German government recently stopped the takeover of the technology company Aixtron, when it looked as if one Chinese company cancelled an order, which pushed down the share price of the German supplier, so that a second Chinese company could buy Aixtron for less. The German economics ministry has warned that in 70 percent of the twenty largest recent takeovers, the purchasing Chinese company was majority-owned by the Chinese government....We should now stand shoulder to shoulder with the Americans to uphold the rules-based system of international trade and act against currency manipulation." • • • DEAR READERS, While it would be a leap to go from the Spectator's defense of stopping China's militaristic trade and currency policies to its support for military action to stop China's aggression in the South China Sea, the fact is that they are two sides of the same militaristic anti-democratic coin. President Trump, Secretary Tillerson and the Trump economic and trade teams will be addressing both when they simultaneously take on China as a "currency manipulator," impose tariffs to make up for China's dumping of goods into the US market, and begin a program to roll back China's illegal seizure of territory on the South China Sea. The Trump presidency is the first western government since China was opened up by President Nixon and Henry Kissinger to seriously and publicly take on the task of facing down China's combination of bullying with words while waging war on the West with unfair trade, currency manipulation, and illegal military control of the South China Sea. Every 'free trade' country in the world ought to support President Trump in this long overdue economic battle that western timidity has allowed to become a military battle as well by reason of the West's refusal to call out China for its brutal worldwide war on democracy and refusal to accept the rules of trade and territorial ambition.