Democracy and Class Struggle remembers the Obama speech in Australia and the Asian Pivot in 2011 as the beginning of a new offensive against China we are now entering stage two of this offensive with this interview of Trump in Wall Street Journal.
China has a preference for soft power but in 2011 we saw articles in the People's Liberation Daily for the first time saying US will have to decide which is more important Los Angeles or Taiwan and the hard power option started to emerge.
If the US thinks that China will continue with the soft power option in view of the interview with Donald Trump in the Wall Street Journal they are making a very serious miscalculation - hard power has already moved forward in China's tools in view of Trump's arrival and public statements.
2017 is already cursed with interesting times
US President-elect Donald Trump has said that he will not commit to the 'One China' policy unless Beijing changes its currency and trade policies.
Trump, who has often questioned America’s commitment to the 'One China' policy in the China-Taiwan row, made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday.
Asked if he supported China's policy on Taiwan, Trump said, “Everything is under negotiation including ‘One China’.”
The 'One China' policy refers to the policy or the diplomatic acknowledgement that there is only one state called China, despite the existence of two governments – one in China and another in the island of Taiwan.
Under the policy, the United States recognizes and has formal ties with the government in Beijing rather than Taiwan. China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province since a government was established there in 1949. Beijing believes the island will be reunified with the mainland one day.
Last month, Trump stirred tensions when he talked over the phone with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, an unprecedented move that angered Beijing.
Trump defended his decision on Friday, saying, "It would have been very rude not to accept the phone call,” from Taiwan’s president. The US president-elect has claimed that Tsai called him.
“We sold them $2 billion of military equipment last year. We can sell them $2 billion of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call,” he stated.
The conversation between Trump and Tsai was a first by a US president or president-elect since Washington cut ties with Taiwan in 1979 and committed to the 'One China' policy.
Despite trying to calm the tensions, the administration of President Barack Obama has also challenged the 'One China' policy by authorizing military deals with Taiwan.
On Friday, Trump also spoke about China’s currency policy. He said he wouldn’t declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in the White House, as he had promised. “I would talk to them first.”
“Certainly they are manipulators. But I’m not looking to do that,” he said.
Nevertheless, Trump slammed China’s currency policy. “Instead of saying, ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, ‘Oh, our currency is dropping.’ It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose.”
“Our companies can’t compete with them now because our currency is strong and it’s killing us,” the billionaire lamented.
Trump has repeatedly accused China of devaluing yuan, a move that Washington says is done to favor Chinese exporters at the expense of their foreign competitors.
SOURCE: http://presstv.ir/Detail/2017/01/14/506137/Trump-One-China-policy
According to Amitai Etzioni, ( watch the video) professor of international Affairs at George Washington University, “the United States is preparing for a war with China, a momentous decision that so far has failed to receive a thorough review from elected officials, namely the White House and Congress.”
This war would begin with a “blinding attack against Chinese anti-access facilities, including land and sea-based missile launchers … satellite and anti-satellite weapons”.
The incalculable risk is that “deep inland strikes could be mistakenly perceived by the Chinese as pre-emptive attempts to take out its nuclear weapons, thus cornering them into ‘a terrible use-it-or-lose-it dilemma’ [that would] lead to nuclear war.”
Source: John Pilger
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http://democracyandclasstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/trumps-strategy-is-to-set-russia.html
