Dialogo USA-Cina: una relazione fragile + Le Monde

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Wsws 090730

Dialogo USA-Cina: una relazione fragile

John Chan

●    Tesi Wsws: Il Dialogo Strategico ed Economico USA-Cina ha rivelato la dipendenza del capitalismo americano fortemente indebitato (deficit di bilancio Usa pari a $1850 MD) dalla Cina, importante fonte di finanziamento (detiene oltre $800MD in Buoni del tesoro USA e diverse centinaia di MD in obbligazioni governative).

●    Il Dialogo USA-Cina rappresenta il declino storico del capitalismo USA, che tenta di mantenere la Cina sotto il proprio predominio elargendole delle concessioni (strategia inaugurata dall’ex consigliere alla Sicurezza USA, Brzezinski, che chiede la cooperazione cinese anche sulla questione iraniana, su quella India-Pakistan, nel conflitto israelo-palestinese e per il MO in generale).

o   Alle celebrazioni del 30° anniversario delle relazioni USA-Cina parlò del “Gruppo dei Due che potrebbe cambiare il mondo”.

●    L’Amministrazione USA ha bisogno dei crediti cinesi per finanziare i massicci finanziamenti a Wall Street (La Clinton ha sollecitato Pechino a continuare ad acquistare i BOT americani; Geithner ha assicurato i leader cinesi che Obama proteggerà le obbligazioni detenute dalla Cina accrescendo le misure di austerità per ridurre a medio termine il deficit di bilancio, senza accennare alla questione della sottovalutazione dello yuan …)

o   Gli aiuti di migliaia di MD a Wall Street decisi da Bush e poi da Obama avevano l’obiettivo di riversare le perdite finanziarie astronomiche sulle spalle della classe operaia americana, distruggendo servizi sociali essenziali, come sanità ed educazione, e tagliando ulteriormente i salari reali.

o   Ma il calo dei consumi dei lavoratori americani è un problema oltre che per la Cina anche per altri paesi asiatici.

●    La Cina ha bisogno della domanda americana per sostenere i settori legati all’export (non ha ripetuto la richiesta di sostituire il $ da una nuova moneta di riserva internazionale), per creare milioni di posti di lavoro e tenere sotto controllo lo scontento popolare.

●    La Cina ha bisogno che il valore del $ rimanga stabile, dato che i 2/3 dei suoi oltre 2000 MD di riserve in valuta estera sono in $.

o   In Cina stanno emergendo profonde tensioni sociali, derivanti dallo sfruttamento della classe operaia cinese che produce a basso salario per il capitale internazionale:

o   la scorsa settimana, 30 000 lavoratori del siderurgico della provincia N-E di Jilin sono scesi in protesta contro la privatizzazione e le perdite occupazionali, durante le manifestazioni è stato ucciso il loro manager.

o   In sei mesi la Cina ha erogato prestiti pari ad oltre ¼ del PIL 2008, crea occupazione a breve termine, ma anche sovraccapacità produttiva e aumenta il deficit statale.

●    Assieme alla loro interdipendenza, cresce il contrasto di interessi tra le due potenze.

●    Il G2 ha suscitato preoccupazioni negli imperialismi Ue e Giappone che la Cina acquisti un maggior peso internazionale a loro spese: Obama ha dichiarato che le relazioni USA-Cina hanno peso uguale a qualsiasi altra relazione bilaterale.

●    Il vertice G2 di Washington ha però raggiunto scarsi accordi sostanziali,

●    la crisi finanziaria internazionale ha esacerbato anziché placare le tensioni tra le grandi potenze.

●    Pure in declino economico, per esercitare la propria egemonia agli USA rimane in ogni caso lo strumento militare, che entra in conflitto con il desiderio della Cina di diventare grande potenza militare.

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– Il Dialogo fu istituito dall’Amministrazione Bush, segretario al Tesoro Paulson, per discutere le questioni finanziarie; da Obama è stato elevato a Dialogo sulle questioni strategiche che stanno emergendo nelle relazioni tra le due potenze, includendo il ministero Esteri.

o   Presenti all’incontro (27-28 luglio 2009) per gli USA: la segretaria di Stato Hillary Clinton, il ministro al Tesoro, Timothy Geithner, il presidente Fed, Bernake;

o   per la Cina la maggior delegazione mai vista, 150 alti funzionari, dguidati dal consigliere statale Dai Bingguo (Esteri), dal vice-primo ministro Wang Qishan (Economia) e dal capo della Banca Centrale, Zhou Xiaochuan, nessuno appartenente al Comitato Centrale del PCC.

– Gli USA, consapevoli che il regime cinese siede su una bomba sociale a tempo, ma dipendenti dal feroce sfruttamento dei salariati cinesi, hanno praticamente taciuto Usa sulla repressione militare cinese delle proteste degli Uighur nella regione dello Xinjiang, silenzio apprezzato dal vice-ministro Esteri cinese.

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Le Monde       090731
Editoriale – G20 o G2 ?

●     Un allerta per la UE: il dialogo sino-americano non finisce con il marginalizzare la UE, sempre meno capace di pesare a livello internazionale, malgrado il suo peso economico?

●     Il primo vertice del “dialogo strategico ed economico” USA-Cina ha dimostrato che la crisi finanziaria avrà conseguenze geopolitiche internazionali.

●     Nulla è più possibile senza la Cina, l’unico paese a partecipare alle tre istanze di G2, G4 (BRIC) e G20 (8 paesi industrializzati + grandi paesi emergenti), e la crisi accentuerà tale tendenza. [WSWS, dichiarazioni Clinton e Geithner: “Semplicemente, ben poche questioni possono essere risolte da USA o Cina da soli. E poche senza USA e Cina assieme.”]

–   Alla vigilia del vertice a 2, gli esperti di Goldman Sachs prevedevano che Cina e Brasile sarebbero usciti rafforzati dalla crisi in corso.

–   La Cina è divenuta il maggiore creditore del pianeta, grazie alle sue riserve in divise (oltre 2000 MD di $); il suo peso internazionale le conferisce diritti (non accetta più lezioni sui diritti umanitari) e doveri (comunicato finale del vertice: la Cina deve aumentare la quota del consumo nell’aumento del PIL, mentre gli Usa devono aumentare il risparmio).

Nonostante le intenzioni manifestate, non è certo che le due potenze resisteranno a tentazioni protezioniste (da parte del Congresso per gli USA e dei responsabili politici regionali per al Cina).

Wsws 090730

World Socialist Web Site

wsws.org

Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)

US-China talks: a fragile relationship
By John Chan
30 July 2009

–   The July 27-28 US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Washington highlighted the dependence of heavily-indebted US capitalism on China as a major source of financing.

–   At the same time, the forum revealed the increasingly conflicting strategic and economic interests of the two countries.

–   First established by the Bush administration to discuss financial issues with the Beijing regime under former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the meeting was upgraded by the Obama administration to include the State Department and the strategic issues that are looming large in US-China relations.

–   US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao agreed on holding the dialogue during April’s G20 summit in London—amid the deepening global economic crisis. With a budget deficit to rise to $1.85 trillion this year, the Obama administration needs China, now its largest creditor nation (holding more than $800 billion in Treasury bills and several hundred billion in government agency bonds), to finance its massive bailouts of Wall Street. This week alone, the American government is issuing $200 billion worth of bonds.

–   The Beijing regime, which is struggling with rising unemployment, desperately wants American demand to pick up again, to provide markets for China’s ailing export sector.

–   Last week, 30,000 rioting steel workers in the northeastern Jilin province killed their manager in a protest over privatisation and job losses, showing the deep social tensions created by the exploitation of the Chinese working class as cheap labour for global capital.

–   The US side was headed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, along with Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke.

–   Beijing sent its largest ever delegation to Washington, with 150 senior officials led by state councilor Dai Bingguo (in charge of foreign policy), vice premier Wang Qishan (who oversees the economy) and central bank chief, Zhou Xiaochuan.

–   While the US brought a high-powered US team to the talks, none of the Chinese delegates were members of the most powerful Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo Standing Committee.

–   President Obama inaugurated the event, declaring the US-China relationship will “shape the 21st century”. To try brush off suggestions that China will challenge the supremacy of the US, Obama declared: “Some in China think we will try to contain China’s ambitions; some in America think there is something to fear in a rising China. I take a different view. I believe in a future… when our nations are partners out of necessity, but also out of opportunity.”

–   Clinton and Geithner wrote a joint piece in the Wall Street Journal, declaring: “Simply put, few global problems can be solved by the US or China alone. And few can be solved without the US and China together. The strength of the global economy, the health of the global environment, the stability of fragile states and the solution to nonproliferation challenges turn in large measure on cooperation between the US and China.”

–   Clinton visited China in February, urging Beijing to keep buying US government bonds, an unprecedented action by a US secretary of state. In June, Geithner was in Beijing to assure the Chinese leaders that the Obama White House would protect the massive Chinese bond holdings by implementing savage austerity measures in order to slash budget deficits.

–   In his first official statement in January, Geithner had threatened that the new administration would name China as a “currency manipulator” for allegedly undervaluing the yuan to boost its exports and thus deepen the huge US trade deficit with China. At the meeting this week, Geithner remained silent on the subject. In the words of US Chamber of Commerce senior vice president Myron Brilliant: “This not an issue that the administration is banging the table on.”

–   For their part, Chinese officials remained silent on their previous calls for the US dollar to be displaced by a new global reserve currency. Chinese central bank head Zhou told reporters that at the meeting with Geithner there was no discussion about a new international reserve currency, while China’s managed currency exchange was only “touched upon”.

–   Nevertheless, vice premier Wang reiterated Beijing’s position of asking the US to protect the value of dollar, amid fears that growing US deficits will undermine China’s huge dollar-denominated assets. Two-thirds of China’s more than $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves are held in US dollars. Geithner responded: “As China will do, we in the United States will move to bring out fiscal deficits down over the medium term, and we will work to reverse the exceptional actions we had to take to stabilise the crisis.”

–   The multi-trillion bailouts of Wall Street by the Bush and then the Obama administrations were aimed at transferring astronomical financial losses onto the back of the American working class, which means destroying essential social services like healthcare and education as well as a further contraction of real wages. This constitutes the essence of Geithner’s pledge to Beijing to “bring down” the US deficits through austerity measures.

–   The declining consumption of American workers, however, will send not only China but other Asian economies into deep trouble. Geithner called on China to shift toward more domestic-led growth for a “balanced and sustained global growth” while the US shifted from debt-driven consumption to increased savings rates.

–   In the so-called economic rebalancing, the cutting of US consumption will come into sharp conflict with Beijing’s urgent need to expand production to create millions of jobs in order to quell discontent.

–   Referring to China’s own gigantic stimulus packages, Michael Pettis, a finance professor at Peking University, warned in the Wall Street Journal: “As China pours new loans into the system at a rate of more than a quarter of last year’s GDP in just six months, it creates short-term employment but increases additional excess capacity and degrades the government’s balance sheet… If rising savings in the US clash with the government-induced production hikes in China, both countries could be forced into mutually destructive policies. The consequences, especially for China, could be brutal.”

–   Knowing that the Beijing regime is sitting on a social time bomb, the Obama administration has been largely silent on China’s military-police repression of the unrest in Xinjiang Uighur region. As dozens of Uighur activists chanted slogans of “Shame on China” outside the White House, Chinese vice foreign minister Wang Guangya expressed “our appreciation for the moderate attitude of the United States” over the unrest in Xinjiang. He told reporters that Washington had “unequivocally said that this incident is entirely a domestic affair of China”.

–   Not only is American capitalism dependent on the brutal exploitation of the Chinese working class as cheap labour, the Obama administration is well aware that it is only a matter of time before large-scale social unrest also erupts in the US, as a result of the savage social attacks on the working class.

–   The US-China dialogue signified the historic decline of US capitalism. The meeting was designed to make some concessions to China in order to bring it within the umbrella of a US-dominated world order. Such a strategy was first proposed in Beijing in January by former US national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a key role in forming Obama’s foreign policy. Brzezinski delivered a speech as part of the official celebration of the 30th anniversary of US-China diplomatic ties. He was part of the US delegation that included key figures like former US President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who were received by Chinese President Hu Jintao and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

–   Brzezinski’s speech was published in the Financial Times on January 13 under the headline: “The Group of Two that could change the world”. He noted that “a globally ascending China is a revisionist power in that it desires important changes in the international system but it seeks them in a patient, prudent and peaceful fashion.” Brzezinski called for a wider cooperation beyond the economic crisis, including Chinese participation in the US’s dealing with Iran, US-China consultation over India-Pakistan relations and a role for China in the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East in general. He postulated a partnership with China “paralleling our relations with Europe and Japan”.

–   However, the G2 concept has caused concerns in Europe and Japan that China will take a greater role in the world’s affairs at their expense. In Obama’s speech for the US-China talks, he noticeably called the US-China relationship as “important as any bilateral relationship in the world”—a formulation calculated not to antagonise Japan—the key US ally in Asia since World War II.

Essentially, Brzezinski called for an accommodation with China in order to avoid a new world war: “In an era in which the risks of a massively destructive ‘clash of civilisations’ are rising, the deliberate promotion of a genuine conciliation of civilisations is urgently needed.”

–   However, the Washington gathering produced few substantive agreements. Far from suppressing the great-power tensions, the global financial crisis is exacerbating them. With less economic leverage over China than ever before, ultimately the only means by which US can assert hegemony is via its military superiority. That superiority is also coming into conflict with China’s own desire to become a major military power.

–   In March, the Obama administration sent a surveillance ship to the South China Sea to monitor Chinese submarines, leading to a confrontation with Chinese maritime patrol ships. Just days before that incident, a Financial Times editorial warned: “The biggest challenge the world confronts is coping with the rise of China. Relatively stable world orders do not easily adapt to the emergence of new powers. There are painful dislocations at best; catastrophic tragedies at worst. In so far as the current global financial and economic crisis partly originated in imbalances generated by China’s enormous trade surpluses—something Beijing disputes—the potential scale of such disruption is already clear. The same applies to China’s ambitions to project diplomatic and military power.”

Despite all the smiles and photo calls at the US-China “dialogue,” powerful economic contradictions are driving the two powers into potentially catastrophic conflicts.

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Le Monde       090731

Edito du Monde – G20 ou G2 ?

LE MONDE | 30.07.09 | 13h05 • Mis à jour le 30.07.09 | 13h05

–   S’il fallait un signe que la crise financière aura des conséquences géopolitiques mondiales, la première session du "dialogue stratégique et économique" entre les Etats-Unis et la Chine vient de l’apporter. Après la création du G20 et le premier rassemblement des BRIC (Brésil, Russie, Inde, Chine) près de Moscou en juin, la rencontre de Washington est riche d’enseignements, même si le communiqué final de trois pages et demie ne restera pas dans les annales de la diplomatie.

–   Première constatation : alors que la République populaire de Chine s’apprête à célébrer ses quarante ans, Pékin est au centre du monde. A nouveau, rappelleraient les historiens. La Chine est le seul pays à figurer dans les trois instances : G2, G4 (Brésil, Russie, Inde, Chine), G20 (les huit pays les plus industrialisés, plus les grandes économies émergentes). Rien ne peut se faire sans lui. La crise ne peut qu’accentuer cette tendance.

–   La Chine et le Brésil sortiront renforcés de la période actuelle, estimaient, à la veille de la rencontre sino-américaine, les experts de Goldman Sachs, qui ne les considèrent d’ailleurs plus comme des pays émergents.

–   Forte de ses réserves de devises phénoménales (plus de 2 000 milliards de dollars), la Chine est devenue le principal créancier de la planète. Pas seulement des Etats-Unis. Cela confère certains droits. Ainsi, les Ouïgours et les Tibétains n’auront pas pesé lourd dans le communiqué de Washington, qui expédie en six lignes la poursuite du dialogue sur les droits de l’homme sur la base "de l’égalité et du respect mutuel". La Chine entend moins que jamais recevoir de leçons en la matière. Mais ce poids impose un certain nombre de devoirs. Le communiqué indique que les Etats-Unis doivent augmenter leur épargne, et la Chine la part de la consommation dans la croissance du PIB.

–   Les deux puissances dialoguent en permanence. Mais certains clignotants sont allumés. Malgré les intentions affichées, de nombreuses incertitudes demeurent sur la capacité des deux pays à résister aux tentations protectionnistes (du Congrès, côté américain ; des responsables politiques régionaux, côté chinois) ou sur les engagements qu’ils sont réellement prêts à prendre pour que la conférence de Copenhague sur le climat aboutisse.

–   Question : ce dialogue sino-américain qui aborde de nombreux aspects n’aboutit-il pas à marginaliser l’Union[e] européenne, de moins en moins capable, malgré son poids économique, de peser sur la scène internationale. Le G2 devrait mobiliser Bruxelles.

Article paru dans l’édition du 31.07.09

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