China

Washington’s political gridlock on the national debt ceiling benefits Beijing, fearmongers warn By Timur Fomenko, a political analyst U.S. President Joe Biden delivers a brief update of the ongoing negotiations over the debt limit in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on May 17, 2023 in Washington, DC. ©  Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images If some headlines are to be believed, the United States is on the verge of default. Well, technically. With US national debt ever rising, the congressional debt ceiling is set to be breached by the end of this month. Although normally Congress simply votes to raise it even higher, spinning the money printing machine ever onwards, this time the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has opted for a polit...

BY DEAN BAKER Photograph Source: The White House – Public Domain It is standard for politicians, reporters, and columnists to refer to the United States as the world’s largest economy and China as the second largest. I suppose this assertion is good for these people’s egos, but it happens not to be true. Measuring by purchasing power parity, China’s economy passed the U.S. in 2014, and it is now roughly 25 percent larger.[1] The I.M.F. projects that China’s economy will be nearly 40 percent larger by 2028, the last year in its projections. Source: International Monetary Fund. The measure that the America boosters use is an exchange rate measure, which takes each country’s GDP in its own currency and then converts the currency into dollars at the current exch...

The CPC has officially acknowledged that the ‘agreement incapable’ USA is set on hegemony and confrontation. The relationship between US imperialism and People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been marked by contradictions and antagonisms even during the periods of relatively positive relations. In recent years, however, the antagonisms have increased dramatically. This has led the Chinese Foreign Ministry increasingly to criticise US government actions in public – and these criticisms have been mounting in frequency and severity as NATO’s provocation of the war in Ukraine and the USA’s ramping up of hybrid warfare actions against China have accelerated along with the deepening of the world economic crisis. Frank condemnation of US aggression and hypocrisy At a press conf...

By Steve Sweeney WASHINGTON is continuing to escalate tensions with China as part of its new Cold War, with last month the deployment of 200 additional troops to Taiwan. According to unnamed US officials the soldiers will be tasked with training Taiwan’s armed forces against “a rising threat from China.” The Pentagon would not be drawn on the issue, but has told the Wall Street Journal that Washington’s “commitment to Taiwan is rock-solid” (quoted by Demetri Sevastapolou in ‘Pentagon’s top China official visits Taiwan’, Financial Times, 17 February 2017). “We don’t have a comment on specific operations, engagements, or training, but I would highlight that our support for, and defence relationship with, Taiwan remains aligned against the current threat pos...

BY EVE OTTENBERG Photograph Source: Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy – Public Domain Riled up against China, GOP congressmembers have long felt that Washington’s new cold war needed a special venue. So as soon as the baton passed to Republicans in the House, they set up a select committee on China. This is majority leader Kevin “Trump’s the Man” McCarthy’s baby, and if it sounds to you like a forum for much grandstanding and frothing about the communist menace, the yellow peril and the need to beef up the FBI, CIA, DIA and NSA, so they can hunt down China’s spies from the halls of government to the groves of academe – “they’re everywhere” supposedly – you may be onto something. I’m not sure what that something is, but it’s a good bet it ends with U.S. navy aircraft carriers s...