How is China building an empire?Part#3
In part 1 and 2 of this series, I have explained how the USA built an empire using money, debts, along with intimidations. In this final article of the three-part series, I would like to talk about the title How is China building an empire? However, before diving into the article let’s first understand what is China, as a country?
China before 1949 — Imperial China
Unlike countries like India, South East Asian Nations, or Africa, China wasn’t fully under the control of the colonial powers. Though the Qing dynasty ruled the entire nation politically, at the start of the 19th century the economic control slowly started to fall at the hands of European powers. Treaty of Nanking made the Qing dynasty to cede Hong Kong to the British and also allowed them to sell opium in the country and opened the gates for the European powers to enter China. Though the Chinese tried to overcome the influence of foreign powers, most of them failed in one way or another. However, the Boxer rebellion was a wake-up call for most of the Chinese youths.
The boxer rebellion induced nationalism, patriotism, progress in the mind of the youths and military officials that soon paved the way for the Wuchang Uprising that resulted in the declaration of the Republic of China in 1912. After a short stunt of republican life under Sun-Yat Sen, the country fell to the warlords in the ’20s and ’30s. After long civil unrest, the country got its de facto leader Mao Zedong, at the end of World War II after defeating the republican supporters and driving them to the island of Taiwan.
During the period of Mao Zedong, the People’s Republic of China was still considered an underdeveloped and a third-world country. Until 1971, the Republic of China in Taiwan was recognized by the world nations, and in that year, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) got its long-pending recognition by throwing out Taiwan from United Nations and securing a seat in the United Nations Security Council. And then started the upward trajectory of Red China.
China from 1978 to present
There are two most prominent figures in China’s political history after the demise of Mao Zedong. The PRC has got a few leaders, however, these two are the major figures who intended to change how the world views China. The first one is Deng Xiaoping and the other one is Xi Jinping. In 1978, Den Xiaoping outmaneuvered Hua Guofeng, Mao’s personally appointed successor, to become the leader of Red China. He opened the markets of China to the world and his economic reforms pulled more than 150 million peasants out of extreme poverty. The nation enjoyed an average of 11% of growth for nearly 2 decades. It is one of the highest average GDP growth reported by any nation for such a long period. While introducing such reforms, Xiaoping might not have predicted that he would create an economic monster three decades later.
After Xiaoping, the next formidable leader of China would be Xi Jinping, the current president of the People’s Republic of China. Xi is the son of Xi Zhongxu, who is considered as one of the first generations of Chinese leadership. Xi Jinping after completing his college became a full-time politician and quickly rose through the ranks of the Communist Party of China. He acted as Governor of two provinces before joining the Politburo Committee of the party and soon anointed as the successor of the then-premier Hu Jintao. Since taking up the presidentship in 2013 Xi Jinping is advocating more assertive foreign policy.
China in the future
In the first two decades of the 21st century, the USA is still considered as the only superpower of the world capable of creating a deep impact on the world either economically or militarily. However, America is going to face huge competition in the upcoming years, the one even they have to rely upon to smoothly run their own economy.
During the cold war, there were virtually no economic transactions between the USA and the Soviets. They both functioned in two different worlds. However, the case with China is different.
Ever since Den Xiaoping opened up the market of China to the world, it has slowly become the factory of the world.
Nowadays over 60% of mobile phones , more than 40% of the personal computers and nearly 30% of air conditioners are made in China. Likewise, we can add Furniture, shoes, glassware, toys, etc. on the list of things that are being manufactured in China.
Now, can you see the problem here?
The whole world runs smoothly because the Chinese are supplying our needs at a cheap price. If you want your people to enjoy the technologies you have created by spending millions of dollars, you need China. Even the MacBook Pro I’m using, one of the flagship products of Apple is manufactured in China. Remember, Apple is considered as the symbol of America and the government of the USA can do nothing to stop them to manufacture there. China is one of the major economies that enjoy a trade surplus with almost every other nation in the world.
With all the money they have accumulated through exports and predatory pricings, President Xi Jinping, believes that now is the right time to start building an empire. To achieve this huge ambition, he first needed stability in his country. Unlike the USA, where the policy of the nation is decided by the corporatocracy, in China it is done by the Communist Party of China (CPC). The advantage of being managed by corporates is that even though the presidents or government changes, your policies won’t get affected. That’s why even when the USA saw different presidents in the last five decades, their aim stayed in one path, Making America great!.
Xi understood this and he carefully accumulated more power in his hands enabling him to stay in the power till his death. Many political analysts are even considering him as the next Mao Zedong. He introduced China’s flagship project One Road One Belt, an initiative to rebuild the old silk route and to connect the Chinese manufacturing industries directly to the world market. However, to build such a road you need good infrastructure in the countries those roads are passing on. And here comes the debts and deceit.
China, a successor of the USA
To construct those roads, ports and other infrastructure China will offer millions and sometimes billions of dollars as loans to those countries. The deal would be, you get your roads, ports, and railway lines which in turn will triple your economic output and thereby increasing your country’s wealth rapidly. A sweet deal isn’t? Who else would want to throw away such a deal? You will receive a million dollars of aid, and with that, you can build infrastructures and improve the lifestyle of your countrymen. However, the devil is in detail.
These loans will come up with some preconditions i.e. Only Chinese companies should be given the contract to build those infrastructures, only Chinese analysts will work with the local governments to calculate the project costs as your local government doesn’t such expertise, and you must give high priority for Chinese companies to open up their stalls along those roads. The final and bold step would be, using the Chinese Yuan, since most of the companies would be Chinese and it would be easier for China if the transaction happens via Yuan. Most of these projects will have inflated costs or in the worse cases will be unnecessary for economic development (Hambanthota project in Sri Lanka is the best example). Since only Chinese companies can get the contracts the money from the Chinese banks will never really leave mainland China thereby pushing the receiving countries in a debt trap for the money they never received. The best example would be Pakistan’s China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) where the Chinese have invested $60 billion and recently tried to push the administration of Pakistan to use the Chinese Yuan for easier transactions.
The USA may have lost most of the wars it fought after WWII and yet still retains the world superpower because the world operates on the $$ basis. The money that is being printed by the Federal Bank of the USA. The Chinese understood that to build a global empire, you need to create a global currency, the money that most of the nations interact with each other. Since China has become the factory of the world, almost every nation of the planet interacts with them and now if the Chinese can at least lure half of the world to use their Chinese Yuan for money transactions, they would achieve half of their goal of building their own empire!
And the next half can be achieved when the other half of the world is either indebted to the Chinese or have a huge trade deficit with them. Thereby controlling the whole world conveniently sitting in Beijing. Not even the USA can achieve this since the whole world doesn’t depend on them to fulfill their needs except for the dollars. Most of the countries are afraid of the USA because most of the nations in the world including some powerful ones side with the USA. If the Americans impose bans or economic sanctions against a country, they will have a few countries to interact with. The best example would be Venezuela and Iran.
The Chinese are already on their path to achieving such a monopoly in the World.
