GOOD MORNING FROM LONDON
DOES CHINA HAVE THE NECESSARY STAMINA?
GRAHAM PERRY COMMENTS;-
Things are moving quickly. In a matter of days, events have clarified the battle now before the world – The U.S. v China.
The focus has been on the U.S. because Trump enjoys the media episodes. He warms to the challenge of media questions. He likes the confrontations. It is part of his make-up – all rather unsettling and de-stabilising but that is how Trump likes it. If you want to understand his mind set, his temperament and his psyche do read the short book written about him by his niece – Mary Trump.
Her book entitled Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, describes her uncle as a fraud and a bully.
Ms Trump, 55, who has a doctoral degree in clinical psychology, writes that the U.S. President exhibits all the characteristics of a narcissist.
“This is far beyond garden-variety narcissism,” she writes of Mr Trump. “Donald is not simply weak, his ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be.”
Mary warns us about her Uncle Donald. He is dangerous and as President of the U.S. he is one of the top most powerful people in the world. We cannot pretend that we do not know or that we have not been warned.
But the focus today is not just on the vulnerable mental make up of the President but on the staying power of China. The world is on the sidelines watching as the battle between the U.S. and China unfolds. And here there is a basic flaw – we know much more about the U.S. than we do about China. There are two reasons;-
First, Trump is available, accessible, engaging, and voluble. As the well-known phrase goes – What You See Is What You Get. By comparison the world knows less about President Xi Jinping. The information is available but the Western media enjoys jousting with Trump. Xi Jinping does not operate in that way. His style of leadership is quite different – reticent, personally quite modest and unwilling to engage in direct encounters with the media.
Second, If less is known about Xi much is known about China. And the key issue going forwards is whether the 1.4 billion citizens of China are “up for a fight”. Do they have staying power? Are they motivated to engage in a titanic Battle of Will with the U.S.?
As the tariffs reach 145% (unthinkable just three weeks ago) questions are being asked about whether the people of China will stand firm and see the battle through to the end or crack and fold as the U.S. tariffs begin to bite.
And here the reader needs to understand China and its political momentum. The Century of Humiliation beats strongly within the Chinese breast. It is at the heart of the drive that led Mao Tsetung to rally the people for two very big encounters. First with the Kuomintang (1927-1949) and, Second, with Japan (1937-1945). In the UK we are fed a surfeit of information about the leadership of Winston Churchill in World War II. Double it, triple it and you get a feel for the mindset of China’s 1.4bn people.
China was humiliated by the foreign powers who between 1840 and 1949 carved out areas of influence and control in China. The U.K., the U.S., France, Germany, and Japan all shared the spoils of a weak, divided and vulnerable China that was force fed with Indian opium by the manipulative Imperialist powers. But Mao came out on top. The Party and the People won two great victories – over the KMT and the Invading Powers. China stood up. China came of Age. China became its own Master.
This is the mindset that focuses the consciousness of the Chinese masses today. It is tangible, accessible and visible. And here it is relevant to recall the Alaska Confrontation in March 2021 when China’s then Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, in an encounter with U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, rejected head-on the U.S. attempt to negotiate from a position of power. It was a Moment in Time. It struck a big chord with the people of China and underlines the confidence that Beijing has that it will carry the support of the country in its present confrontation with the U.S. China is very resilient.
GRAHAM PERRY
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FROM THE SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
“A remote US airbase in the western Pacific – best known as the departure point for the planes that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – has been reclaimed from the jungle to pose an asymmetrical threat to the Chinese mainland, analysts said.
The US$120 million reconstruction of North Field on Tinian Island – just 193km (120 miles) north of Guam – has included at least 1.86 million square metres (20 million sq ft) of runway and other infrastructure.
According to the US Air Force, the restored airfield will serve as a power projection platform for its agile combat employment strategy (ACE) – a set of concepts aimed at increasing flexibility and resilience while complicating enemy targeting.
The scale of the project was revealed by a series of commercial satellite images published by military website The War Zone and dating from December 2023, a month before work began, to January this year.”
