@weig2000 No he is a contributor and I'm one of his ardent follower, I always tune in on his THE DURAN program and his colleague Alex Christoforou may be bias against China since he was born in the US. But their analysis is spot on and lately even Mr Christoforou had a change of heart maybe this understanding between China and Russia had an impact. They are both anti -EU and neo liberalism.
It would make sense that corporations are interested in containing China. The writing is on the wall over the long term. Chinese companies would edge out American firms slowly over time. While in the short run, American companies benefit from Chinese market access and the growth of the Chinese economy, many of them would eventually be threatened as Chinese companies strengthen and increase their global footprint.
It's the long term threat that causes corporations to be wary of China.
solarz
Brigadier
First, let's talk about Trump. Does Trump hate China? I'd say no, not at all. Okay, maybe a little due to the fact that COVID-19 ruined his re-election chances. Trump can be vindictive like that. Apart from that, everything Trump did during his term was to ensure his re-election.
Bannon and Navarro are just pawns of a higher power. They were picked by Trump because they aligned with Trump's support base, which was the rabidly anti-establishment conservatives. Now remember my analogy about Dukes and Barons? Well, there's also an Archbishop in there, and that is of course the religious fundamentalists. The evangelical church resemble, in many ways, a corporation. Some would say they are a pyramid scheme. In any case, they share much of the same motivations as corporations. Their business is converting people to their beliefs, because converts are their source of income. Now add to that the fact that the evangelical church has had a hand in China's pocket since the days of the Opium War. Put yourself in their shoes. Their "golden age" in China was when China was weak, divided, and hooked up on opium. When the Communists came into power, they were summarily booted out, and only came back in the last 30 years with the market reforms, and they basically had to restart everything from scratch. It should be pretty obvious where their interests lie.
Finally, Pompeo is your typical sociopathic opportunist. Normal human beings do not like to lie, that's why most of us are really bad at it. It's an evolutionary trait that allows people to trust each other and work together. However, there are some individuals who simply lack this trait. They can lie without the slightest tinge of guilt, and have a completely lack of empathy. To these individuals, people are tools, to be used and discarded without an afterthought. If, hypothetically, Pompeo had seen some way of benefiting from improving US-China relations, he'd be singing Xi Jinping's praise all day long. Pompeo, of course, was trying to ride on Trump's coattails and make a name for himself in preparation for 2024. That said, it should also be quite obvious that as a former CIA director, Pompeo is firmly in the pocket of the MIC.
@Crang bro anything is fair game except for financial and tech, that is where the hidden hand of US imperialism lies. Its all about resources (financial & raw materials) and scarcity (tech) if one of them is lost the whole system will crumble.
There are no forever friends, only shared interests.
The Russian - China friendship will last for however long it can last.
solarz
Brigadier
You also need to look at what kinds of corporations, as they are not a monolithic collective.
The ones that benefit most from trade with China, such as Apple and Walmart, certainly are NOT calling for worsening relations! Look, instead, at corporations like Facebook, that had been trying in vain to get back into the Chinese market for over a decade; telecoms that see Huawei blazing ahead in the 5G race; Big Oil that sees competition from Sinopec, and of course the MIC who directly benefits from increased conflict with China.
This is why I came up with the analogy of a feudal kingdom, as each of those mega-corps hold their own little fiefdom, and the overall direction of the American kingdom is based on the various maneuverings (lobbying) of these modern day nobility.
Corporate executives and shareholders might not broadly understand strategic imperatives of the US. Think tanks, DOD, CIA and other deep state organizations operate at the strategic level. What they see as America's long term interests still serve corporate America but at a much longer time horizon, often beyond what executives are incentivized on.
America, the "shining city upon a hill" reveals a desire to become the global capital. It takes on more and more roles of a government but extended globally. It pushes domestic laws to become de facto international law with tools like NGOs (we see it in action with BCI), policing is enforced through the US military and allies, liquidity is provided by the FED, global communications and next generation platforms provided by US corporations that answer to US law and gathers intel, etc.
The military industrial complex is an interest group lobbying for high military expenditures but also the US wants to take on the role as a global security provider in order to create a global government, thus I don't see high military expenditures changing unless their long term goals change. A nation can have a government in name but if its functions are superseded by another system then it is effectively absorbed into the larger governmental entity. America wants to have an effective monopoly on military power, global taxation (carbon tax?), global communications controlled by US entities and global legal system centered around US interests, basically roles of a government. A co-ordinated Eurasian entity can challenge that hegemony and remove the world's largest resource pool(capital, natural resource, technology, people) or tax base from US strategic access, effecting the attractiveness of the USD.
Eurasian integration is a threat to American hegemony at a strategic level but not necessarily a threat to American survival. The architect(s) of Eurasian integration would be a powerful nation or nations on the world island (Eurasia). There's 3 main regions of power in Eurasia: EU, Russia, and China. If these regions are able to closely integrate, US would lose ability to gather data and effectively sanction countries without applying overt hard power, increasing cost of its global governance. US sees China as the most likely candidate in successfully pushing for Eurasian integration, thus it poses a threat to its hegemony. A unified China presents a potential that can surpass the US and it deals with that reality with containment and pushes for sedition of Chinese regions.
US being an island away from the world island, fears once it looses strategic dominance over Eurasia, a coordinated Eurasia will have long term structural advantages over the US to out compete it and potentially dominate it in its homeland.
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Really? That seems a bit harsh and heavy handed, not to mention irrational. I also frequent that sub and I find it hard to believe that the mods over there are not only that petty but geopoliticaly ignorant if what you're saying is true.
This all sounds like making an argument for a preset conclusion. The contest between US and China would be in the decades. Corporate interest is not a single-entity interest. Individual corporate interests are relatively short-term focused - who can compete, thrive and survive the next few years. US corporate interests have the motivation to support the US government to open market access or tilt the field to them, but not much appetite for a Cold War type containment struggle with China.
In any case, interesting and seductive analogy aside, what you said are pretty much hypothesis and projection, and do not borne out by evidence and facts.
Of course I am making a generalization. So were you when you said corporate interests do not align with containment. There is diversity to US corporate interests, and companies in a dominating position in their sectors that are less encumbered by day to day struggle will have more energy and the interest to join containment.
Neither of us can account for the myriadic diversity of every commercial interest group, that's why we're making generalizations here.