Wolff Responds: Why a Cold War Against China?

this is Richard Wolffe from democracy at work with another wolf response I want to address the intensifying attacks verbal rhetorical diplomatic economic coming from the United States and directed at the People's Republic of China if it concerns you good it means you're paying attention it is something that is going to be of growing importance in the years ahead and possibly of catastrophic importance so it is very worthwhile examining what's going on the initiative for all of this is the United States China is on the receiving end of us attacks provocations criticisms demonization you name it the Chinese react to use the words of an American diplomat in measured tones what's going on here are the reasons the United States is doing that I'm going to give you three major reasons not in order of importance but in order to give you the context within which to evaluate what's going on number one mr. Trump and the Republicans have badly mangled very reelection effort the failure to prepare for the virus the failure to contain it the fact that we in the United States are five percent of the world's people and we're suffering 25 percent or more of kovat 19 cases and deaths is a staggering staggering pronouncement of failure and failure of the abject abject soil so it's good to deflect people's attention from this abject failure on to a scary foreign enemy and that's what's being done and that's one part of what's going on but it is by far not the only and not even the main reason these things are happening here's the second one China was a wonderful profitable collaborator with the United States for most of the last 30 years what do I mean many many American corporations including most of the biggest ones closed up shop here in the United States partly or wholly and moved to China because the workers wages there were much less and because that would mean higher profits the wages were so much less that it paid to go through the expenses of setting up business over there and shipping this stuff all the way back to the United States because even after you paid those costs the lower wages there were so much lower that your profits zoomed a major part of the rise in the value of stocks in the United States stock exchange over the last thirty years making the rich as rich as they are today is the result of the profits made possible by moving production to the People's Republic of China somewhere between 40 and 50 percent of the goods coming from China or goods produced in China by subsidiaries of American corporations don't be fooled Americans made a fortune not just in getting cheap labor because as China developed its economy which it did spectacularly for those 40 years it became one of the world's greatest growing markets for goods and services so American companies had two reasons to go one to take advantage of the low wages two to be able to sell into one of the world's fastest-growing and largest markets the Chinese got in return two things one shared technology that's stolen share nobody put a gun to the head of American corporations who wanted cheap labor in China who wanted access to the Chinese market they traded their technology to get those things profitable for both sides and the Chinese economy took off they gained absolutely just like the United States a mutually profitable collaboration and one result was Chinese economic growth over the last 35 years China has grown three times faster than the United States partly the result of the Communist Party's direction of the economy partly the result of the private sector of Chinese business and partly the result of foreign businesses British Japanese and American all of them working together produced the spectacular emergence of China as the great competitor of the United States it was a collaborator it was a mutually profitable arrangement but it has now become a bit of a competitor and that has happened in history many times the very success of a collaboration turns the collaborators into competitors that's the way capitalism works and that's the way it had worked with the United States and China so now we have a problem here in the United States many industries get a lot of profits out of the dealings with China but there are now an increasing number of industries for whom the Chinese success represents competition and what we're watching right now is a kind of a shift we still collaborate we still make a lot of profits together but we're also competitors and the desperate from Republicans sensing that she may be an advantage in championing the competitor side being tough ties in the hopes it will get them something in a situation where they are losing badly so the things get worked out together lastly the military the cold war with Russia from 1946 until 1989 had a lot to do with the fact that the United States economy totally committed to World War two and was producing for war starting around 1939 and 40 all the way to 1946 and the great fear in the United States at the end of World War two was that the economy which shrink back fall back at the end of the war no more war production no more millions of people in the military that we would go back to the Great Depression of the 1930s that had preceded the war one of the ways to prevent that was to keep the military going and the only way you could keep spending vast sums of money on the military is if we had a credible enemy with the Germans defeated and the Japanese defeated we had no credible enemy so the Soviet Union and a cold war with them was the substitute it solved the problem it gave us the enemy that justified the military but in 1989 the Soviet Union collapsed we tried to make it a war against terrorism that would last forever to justify the military but it's very hard to justify aircraft carriers against people who carry peashooters in most parts of the world it didn't work we need a more credible enemy and China is the only plausible candidate in an economy that is dependent on the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower no less warned us about we should never underestimate the role played in our foreign policy by the need of an enemy to justify the vast expenditure over 750 billion dollars this year alone on the military so there you have it those are the major reasons driving all this very dangerous very tense but don't be fooled this has nothing to do with Hong Kong and it has nothing to do with the abusive treatment of Muslim minorities whatever the truth of all of that is it's beside the point these are flash points picked up as part of the United States is trying to figure out how to come to terms with its needs and because of the pandemic and because of the crash of capitalism we are living through the needs are very intense shake up our politics and our re conceptualizing our relations with the rest of the world China is being reexamined and we positioned if you like in the American consciousness to accommodate fundamental economic and military needs that this troubled capitalism now faces this is Richard Wolff for democracy at work with another wolf response

Channel: RichardDWolff

Views: 167,470

Rating: 4.883534 out of 5

Keywords: Capitalism Hits the Fan, Democracy at Work, Occupy the Economy, economy, economics, capitalism, profits, wealth, poverty, inequality, social justice, democracy, democratic decision-making, co-ops, worker co-ops, yt:cc=on, labor, Trump, workplaces, global economy, power, socialism, exploitation, protests, pandemic, looting, unemployment, education, healthcare, COVID-19, epidemic, virus, public health, China, military

Id: YeoRl3qedQE

Length: 10min 15sec (615 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 23 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lilbprotector]

Wolff is based af