Discussing Biden's Potential China Policy

I know this is just before Biden taking over. But he could've stop this if he wanted it to, like the visit to Taiwan from the ambassador to the U.N.

So basically, business as usual.

From Asia time

US rescue of Ecuador from Chinese debt is a trap

South American country is the most recent success of the US policy to edge out Beijing's business interests

By VIJAY PRASHADJANUARY 24, 2021

Ecuador President Lenin Moreno. Crises have damaged his image. Photo: Handout

On January 14, a US government agency decided to pay off part of Ecuador’s debt to China so that the Latin American country could break ties with Chinese telecommunications firms. The US International Development Finance Corporation, which is funded by the US government, provided Ecuador with a loan of $2.8 billion.

The DFC’s head, Adam Boehler, said the loan goes to Ecuador to “refinance predatory Chinese debt” and to strengthen Ecuador’s alliance with the United States.

This move by the DFC is not economic as much as political. Ecuador’s development is secondary. What is primary is the US desire to remove Chinese businesses and political influence from Latin America.

Boehler, a close friend of the Trump family, took over the DFC and has since driven a hard agenda in Latin America against China.

The DFC was created by the US Congress’ Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act of 2018.

Rest of the article:

So tell me, when did any Chinese president pardon any large group of criminals? You'll bet if they just pardon one, the MSM will be accusing China of corruption.



And thus is another human scum. Only get beaten to number one spot by Ron Vara and far Pomp.

Gatekeeper said:

I know this is just before Biden taking over. But he could've stop this if he wanted it to, like the visit to Taiwan from the ambassador to the U.N.

So basically, business as usual.

From Asia time

US rescue of Ecuador from Chinese debt is a trap

South American country is the most recent success of the US policy to edge out Beijing's business interests

By VIJAY PRASHADJANUARY 24, 2021

Ecuador President Lenin Moreno. Crises have damaged his image. Photo: Handout

On January 14, a US government agency decided to pay off part of Ecuador’s debt to China so that the Latin American country could break ties with Chinese telecommunications firms. The US International Development Finance Corporation, which is funded by the US government, provided Ecuador with a loan of $2.8 billion.

The DFC’s head, Adam Boehler, said the loan goes to Ecuador to “refinance predatory Chinese debt” and to strengthen Ecuador’s alliance with the United States.

This move by the DFC is not economic as much as political. Ecuador’s development is secondary. What is primary is the US desire to remove Chinese businesses and political influence from Latin America.

Boehler, a close friend of the Trump family, took over the DFC and has since driven a hard agenda in Latin America against China.

The DFC was created by the US Congress’ Better Utilization of Investments Leading to Development Act of 2018.

Rest of the article:

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So they are "paying off" Ecuador's debt by adding another $2.8 billion in debt?? How does this benefit Ecuador?

gadgetcool5 said:

So they are "paying off" Ecuador's debt by adding another $2.8 billion in debt?? How does this benefit Ecuador?

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Ding Ding Ding! So finally, Mr Gadget, you got it. You hit the nail on the head, purely by accident I guess.

Yes, it doesn't benefit Ecuador at all, but frankly, it was never designed to. The only people this benefits is the good old US.

All they done is get Ecuador off Chinese debt onto the U.S. debt. These exchange benefits the U.S. as from now on it is the U.S. that got Ecuador by their balls.

Gatekeeper said:

Ding Ding Ding! So finally, Mr Gadget, you got it. You hit the nail on the head, purely by accident I guess.

Yes, it doesn't benefit Ecuador at all, but frankly, it was never designed to. The only people this benefits is the good old US.

All they done is get Ecuador off Chinese debt onto the U.S. debt. These exchange benefits the U.S. as from now on it is the U.S. that got Ecuador by their balls.

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It never detail the comparable terms of the US loans.

I think I read somewhere that at least the Chinese were willing to put payment on hold until at least 2022.

The disclosure never mention what the rates were and the payment schedule looks like.

Anyhow, it's not like we make any 4G/LTE or 5G gear here anyway. At best, Ecuador will have to get Made In China Ericsson or Nokia after being re-sold by US distributor.

steel21 said:

It never detail the comparable terms of the US loans.

I think I read somewhere that at least the Chinese were willing to put payment on hold until at least 2022.

The disclosure never mention what the rates were and the payment schedule looks like.

Anyhow, it's not like we make any 4G/LTE or 5G gear here anyway. At best, Ecuador will have to get Made In China Ericsson or Nokia after being re-sold by US distributor.

Click to expand...

But I think we missed the point.

First, yes, we don't know the details. But the point here is, isn't this the lack of transparency that the U.S. always accused China of? But the MSM never pick this up when is the U.S. that is being opaque! Hmmm.

2nd, Is not the term of the deal that's interesting. For all we know, the U.S. could be 'giving it away'. The point being they are willing to do any of this just to get China out of their backyard. Mmmm. Monroe doctrine anyone?

And lastly, is this naivety of Mr gadget' s queries. 'How does this benefit Ecuador' lol.

Ecuador's been compromised since Correa left office; Morena is the same douchebag who betrayed Assange to the Anglos

steel21 said:

I think if you go by PPP, then there is a better than 65% probability that 2X US economic size can happen.

There are 3 major factors here:

1. China climbing up the value chain: Probability 100%, since we are already seeing it happen in real time. Everything from NIO, Xpev, Hongqi, Ehang and SOLO to Huawei and DJI.

2. The increase purchasing power of the RMB vs. the USB and the compounding effects of capital: Probability 75%.+ If you read Macropolo.org's detail analysis of the 14th 5 year plan

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, you can see that attracting foreign investment and increasing domestic Chinese consumption is a distinct goal of this plan. The 14th plan will lay the ground work for the evolutionary plans to come. So as long as they can make this 5 year plan work, everything else will fall into place. It is the perfect window in terms of crossing from the internet 2.0 phase to the comprehensive IOT phase of modernization. Can they do it?

- Their closest competitor, the United States, will need until at least Q3 2023 to get back to 2019 state of normalcy. Don't take my word for it, take it from McKinsey's

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. We/USA are on a B2 trendline in terms of recovery, the charts are on page 66.
- China has laid all the ground work in terms of 5G and national confidence (boosted by COVID-19), necessary for execution.
- No one else has the scale nor the comprehensive planning and execution capability and authority to out compete them.

So yea, I think they will pull off the 14th year plan. And with that, it will set everything into motion, such as devaluing of the USD, and decreased US competitiveness.

3. Precipitous US decline: Probability 50%+ US is in the shit right now. The politics are not going to help.

It could play out as follows. Note, China significantly undercount its GDP, it real nominal GDP is probably somewhere around $17T, and not the $14T it claims. Likewise, I think US GDP is a bit bloated, and likely around $18T, boasted by over inflated legal and medical service "productivity".

Year	USA	China
2020​	20​	14​
2021​	19.4​	15.12​
2022​	18.818​	16.0272​
2023​	18.25346​	16.98883​
2024​	18.61853​	18.00816​
2025​	18.9909​	19.08865​
2026​	19.37072​	19.8522​
2027​	19.75813​	20.64629​
2028​	20.15329​	21.47214​
2029​	20.55636​	22.33102​
2030​	20.96749​	23.22426​
2031​	21.38684​	24.15323​
2032​	21.81457​	25.11936​
2033​	22.25087​	26.12414​
2034​	22.69588​	27.1691​
2035​	23.1498​	28.25587​

USA: I applied a modest 3% GDP decrease until 2024. Then a highly aggressive 2% increase from 2024 to 2035
China: I applied an 8% increase to 2021, then 6% from 2022 to 2025. Then a 4% increase from 2026 to 2035

A more aggressive scenario could be:

Year	USA	China
2020​	20​	17​
2021​	19​	18.7​
2022​	18.43​	20.196​
2023​	17.8771​	21.81168​
2024​	18.05587​	23.12038​
2025​	18.23643​	24.5076​
2026​	18.41879​	25.73298​
2027​	18.60298​	27.01963​
2028​	18.78901​	28.10042​
2029​	18.9769​	29.22444​
2030​	19.16667​	30.39341​
2031​	19.35834​	31.60915​
2032​	19.55192​	32.87351​
2033​	19.74744​	34.18846​
2034​	19.94491​	35.55599​
2035​	20.14436​	36.97823​

Again, not quite 2X, but certainly not impossible. Toss in a 30% devaluation of USD to RMB exchange rate, and that 65% quickly becomes closer to 85%.

The only thing that could fuck up the Chinese is a war in Taiwan. But they are not that stupid. They could apply financial sanction to the island after they have reach technological parity in semiconductors, then just wait until Uncle Sam is exhausted, then come and mop up after 2035.

On the other hand, there are shitloads of factors that can trip up US, such as:
- COVID containment and return to normalcy,
- domestic unrest and terrorism
- political gridlock
- another Trump
- tax revenue shortage in its major urban centers
- increase cost of deficit spending
- USD devaluation
- Euro and RMB gaining up to bypass SWIFT

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Agreed the only thing China needs to do is NOT getting into war, and they got this in the bag
the us will do it utmost to bait China into war especially by using taiwan card,
China must not take the bait, and strive to strengthen its nuclear forces, so the us will be discouraged to even think about getting into war against China

A lot of advice for Bidden administration these days, this one from Foreign Affairs is probably more of a minority view among the elites. But the US needs fundamental rethinking of foreign policies.

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Biden Can’t Restore American Primacy—and Shouldn’t Try​

By

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January 25, 2021​

Four years ago, as Joe Biden prepared to leave the vice-presidency, he that the United States would continue to lead the “liberal international order” and “fulfill our historic responsibility as the indispensable nation.” The years that followed were not kind to Biden’s assurances. President Donald Trump rejected a world-ordering role for the United States, unleashing “America first” nationalism instead. More important, perhaps, Trump exposed the shallow domestic political support for the high-minded abstractions for which foreign policy elites ask soldiers to fight and citizens to pay. By the time of his presidential campaign in 2020, Biden no longer spoke much about the liberal international order or American indispensability. He emphasized healing the country’s domestic wounds and “not merely by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”

But Biden will need to be much bolder if his presidency is to succeed. He is inheriting a long-standing U.S. grand strategy that is systemically broken and that no tonal adjustment or policy nuance can fix. For three decades, successive presidents—Trump included—continually expanded U.S. wars, forward deployments, and defense commitments in the pursuit of armed dominance across the globe. The price of primacy, last year (“The Price of Primacy,” March/April 2020), has been severe. By seeking global dominance rather than just its own defense, the United States has acquired a world of antagonists. These antagonists have in turn further increased the costs and dangers of dominance. As a result, U.S. foreign policy has failed in its most essential purpose: it has made the American people less safe where they live.

The Biden administration enters office intending , not preside over its destruction. Yet realities will intrude. As Biden addresses urgent priorities in his early days—repairing democracy at home, ending a mass-killing pandemic, averting climate chaos, rescuing U.S. diplomacy—he will find, if he takes a hard look, that the burdens of primacy contradict his own goals at every turn.

BREAKING THE CYCLE​

Biden has immediate decisions to make that will either set him on a constructive course or in the same way, over the very same issues, as his predecessors. He has pledged to bring the United States’ “forever wars” to an end and . In his first hundred days, he will have two time-limited opportunities to do so. First, he can revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reverse the pressure toward war ahead of Iran’s presidential elections in June. Second, he can abide by the Doha Agreement with the Taliban and withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by May. On both, he will have to go big or see his efforts fail later.

Getting back into the nuclear deal will not be easy after the Trump administration senselessly punished Iran for holding up its end of the bargain. But Biden will require even more discipline and creativity in order to make the strategic changes needed for the deal to endure. The Obama administration suffered from excessive modesty when it concluded the agreement in 2015. To domestic audiences, it maintained that Iran remained a major threat to the United States. In the Middle East, it compensated Iran’s foes with aid, arms sales, and support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. These allowances made sense if the goal was to maintain U.S. military dominance of the Middle East. But they also fueled the forces that led the United States to leave the nuclear deal under Trump.

The Biden administration must learn the right lesson. Not only should it come back into compliance with the agreement immediately, eschewing any temptation to use Trump’s sanctions as leverage, but it should unapologetically pursue a new era of normal diplomatic relations with Iran. Rather than reward U.S. partners in the region, Biden should fulfill his pledge to terminate U.S. support for Saudi intervention in Yemen, slash arms sales to the kingdom, and cut aid to Israel. Such measures are to rescue American diplomacy in the Middle East. By the same stroke, however, the Biden administration would change U.S. grand strategy in the region, disentangling the United States from its excessive identification with one constellation of actors against the other.

Afghanistan offers another early opportunity for Biden to make rapid and lasting improvements. The Trump administration has handed him a mere 2,500 ground troops in the country and an agreement to withdraw the rest. Biden should accept the unwitting favor. His best chance to end the United States’ war in Afghanistan is now. He should order a full military withdrawal, scrapping his campaign plan to leave behind a residual counterterrorism force. Such a force is unnecessary to deter terrorist attacks emanating from Afghanistan, where the United States long ago achieved its mission of decimating al Qaeda and punishing the Taliban. Now, moreover, failing to withdraw fully would abrogate the U.S.-Taliban deal that Biden has inherited, causing the Taliban to abandon talks and pursue further gains on the battlefield.

Some U.S. officials will no doubt disagree, arguing for delaying withdrawal to allow more time for the parties within Afghanistan to negotiate a final settlement. But such negotiations can take place without U.S. forces, whose presence might even impede Afghans from finding a stable balance of their own. For the United States, half measures will perpetuate endless war. If Biden starts moving back the goalposts for withdrawal, he will embolden domestic critics to argue, in effect, that U.S. forces must remain under any circumstances, whether to preserve hard-won gains or to forestall further losses.

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A NEW STRATEGIC LOGIC​

If Biden acts decisively, he will emerge from his first six months having broken the grip of the old strategic logic and established proof of concept of a new one that puts the identifiable interests of the American people ahead of the futile quest for global dominance. As he engages diplomatically with Iran and ends the United States’ war in Afghanistan, Biden will face predictable accusations of abandoning U.S. partners and emboldening U.S. adversaries. For example, , Trump’s former national security adviser, has contended that pulling back U.S. forces would fail to tame bad behavior by Iran, the Taliban, and others.

Biden can use the bully pulpit to show how badly such arguments miss the point. The point is not to transform Iran or the Taliban into benevolent actors; it is rather to render them no longer threats to and problems for the United States. Iran will continue malign activities in the Middle East, and the Taliban will remain repressive, but they would have little to gain by targeting the United States if the United States were to stop attempting to control events in their neighborhood. By jettisoning grandiose objectives, the United States can shed unnecessary enemies and free itself to advance its interests. It can regain control over its foreign policy.

After scoring early successes in the greater Middle East, the administration could then apply its strategic logic elsewhere: step back from the frontlines to reduce the United States’ liabilities and make the gains that matter. North Korea presents a prime example. Having failed in every attempt to rid the regime of nuclear weapons, the United States should play a different game. It should accept that the regime will possess a nuclear capability for the foreseeable future, encourage peace building on the peninsula, and move to normalize relations. One day it might even be able to remove U.S. troops from the South. Such action is the best way to address the North’s threat—not by defusing all its bombs but by removing potential reasons for them to target the United States.

It will be more difficult for the Biden administration to exhibit restraint in relations with Russia and especially China. It will also be more important, lest the failures of U.S. policy that have afflicted the Middle East over the past two decades expand to Europe and East Asia in the next two decades. Biden has already signaled a desire to work with Beijing on public health and the environment and with Moscow on arms control. But these laudatory aims will ultimately be overwhelmed by rigid adherence to grand-strategic primacy, by which the United States, seeking to dominate each region permanently, fuels intense security competition with rising or assertive powers.

Biden can set clear priorities early by scrapping the last administration’s self-fulfilling construct of “great-power competition.” His first National Security Strategy should recognize that and constitute far more direct threats to the American public than does the specter of armed attack by rival states. Further, it should highlight that China, as the world’s number two power and the leading producer of low-carbon energy technologies, remains an in addressing both challenges.

In order to limit antagonisms counterproductive to U.S. interests, Biden should resist to commit explicitly to waging war with China to defend Taiwan. He should proceed to revamp U.S. military strategy in East Asia. Rather than exercise dominance, the United States should equip its allies and partners to of waterways and airspace to China. In Europe, he should call a halt to NATO enlargement, breaking with three decades of expansion that saddled the United States with unwarranted commitments, damaged relations with Russia, and stifled European initiative. Through prudent retrenchment, the United States can coexist with China and Russia and find the right mix of competition and cooperation as U.S. interests dictate. The alternative is to spend the rest of the twenty-first century guaranteeing conflictual relations, risking great-power war, and crowding out domestic investments.

DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA​

The United States faces existential challenges at home, as Biden appreciates. His , Jake Sullivan, has to judge each policy “by a basic question: Will this make life better, easier, safer, for families across this country?” The American people need every part of their government to work to improve their lives and strengthen their democracy. A grand strategy of armed primacy does the opposite. It sustains animosity with the world, whips up fears of foreigners and supposed internal enemies, and lavishes more than half of federal discretionary spending on the Pentagon year after year. It straitjackets domestic renewal.

For the same reason, Biden has a surprising opportunity. He would foster national unity by pulling back U.S. forces abroad. Fully , like the wider public, support bringing all U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq. It is finally time to deliver on the public’s demand to do less nation building abroad and more building in America. The United States remains an indispensable nation—to its people. Only by serving them can it play a responsible role in the world.