Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
The administration of former US President Donald Trump, escalated tensions with Beijing to the highest level in recent history in all aspects: economy, technology and military. Global security depends on a stable relationship between the two superpowers. Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse reached out to China expert, Jeff J. Brown for some answers to pertinent questions.
Jeff J. Brown is author of The China Trilogy ,blogs and podcasts at China Rising Radio Sinoland, is the producer of China Tech News Flash! , and is a co-founder and the curator of the Bioweapon Truth Commission Global Online Library . His forthcoming book, Faster than a Speeding Bullet – the Chinese People’s Unstoppable Socialist Dream for Global Leadership into the 22nd Century, will be released in 2021. He can be reached at jeff@brownlanglois.com.
Steven Sahiounie (SS): The former US President Trump’s administration escalated the tension between Beijing and Washington to the highest level. The biggest loser in the US-China trade war was the United States.
Do you think the new Biden administration will repair the US-China relationship, or will it maintain the escalation of tensions?
Jeff Brown (JB): I don’t see a lot of change, simply because before Trump, the last US president who acted “presidential” got his brains blown out in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas in 1963. This has been a problem since 1833, when the gangster banksters tried to assassinate US President Andrew Jackson, for closing down their private US central bank, which was printing the people’s money, at interest. We can see with Trump that if you stand up to the oligarchic elite, they will kill you or destroy you.
Trump was no more bellicose or anti-Chinese than every US president/government since 1921, when the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded, and especially since Mao & Company beat Japan and the West, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In fact, the USA and China nearly went to war a number of times in the 1950s-1960s.
Trump simply used the tools at his disposal that the deep state could not manipulate: tariffs, sanctions and embargoes focused on high tech, military, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and his powerful bully pulpit.
I’m not even sure how much the US lost or gained, since the West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM) spewed anti-Trump projectile vomit from before he even got elected, still do, while censoring any data or news that was and is to his benefit, as reported here .
SS: The former US administration supported Taiwan in the China-Taiwan dispute. Do you perceive US President Biden as being a fair broker between the two sides?
JB: Honestly, I don’t think so, except possibly for some cosmetic PR moves.
Chiang Kai-Shek, his fascist KMT and the US military got whipped by Mao Zedong and the Red Army by 1949, running with their tails between their legs to Taiwan. Since then, every US administration has used this renegade China province to try to harass and overthrow the CPC. Arms have continued to pour into the island, preferential trade policies passed and the tacit threat that Uncle Sam will join Taiwan if attacked by the Mainland, have not changed. After Nixon’s overtures to China in 1972, the US mostly adhered to the One-China policy, which they could afford to do, since the West was still far and away much more economically and militarily powerful than the PRC.
But times have changed. Communist-socialist China’s (PPP- purchasing power parity) economy surpassed the US’ in 2014 and is like an unstoppable 600kph maglev train; China Tech is racing past the West at the speed of light and President Xi Jinping has put the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with its air force, navy, rocket, strategic, armed police and reserve forces on par with, and in a number of cases, outstripping Uncle Sam’s capabilities.
The West’s oligarchic deep state cannon only knows how to shoot in one direction: destroy all peoples and their countries that are not controlled and exploited by them. So, these efforts vis-à-vis China will continue, including pushing the Taiwan issue.
SS: The former Trump administration perceived the China-Russia growing relationship as a threat. In your opinion, will the Biden administration continue this perception of the strong relationship as a threat to US interests?
JB: To understand China versus the West, we have to go back in history. Every US administration has worked overtime to keep USSR/Russia and the PRC divided, which they were able to do in 1960, helping orchestrate the Sino-Soviet split. It lasted until Vladimir Putin became Russian president in 2000.
One can only imagine how world history would have been much better for the global 99%, without that cataclysmic, 40-year geopolitical divorce. I think both current leaderships in China and Russia realize that the Sino-Soviet split only served the interests of NATO and they are not going to repeat that tragic mistake, which cascaded disastrously throughout Asia – Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, etc. – to the West’s benefit.
Now, with wise and visionary leadership in both 21st century Moscow and Beijing, Eurangloland has not been able pit these two Asian giants against each other a second time, while working furiously to destroy them individually. On the contrary, global multipolar forces are moving in the opposite direction. With the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), BRICS/BRICS Bank, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), not to mention the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), it’s more and more difficult for the West’s deep state to impose its will in Asia, like it has so successfully done for much of the last 500 years of colonialism and imperialism.
SS: The west continues to use the Uyghurs as political pressure upon Beijing. If the west continues to use the Uyghurs as a threat to China, what would be China’s possible response?
JB: Britain was using Xinjiang (where most of China’s Uyghurs live) and Tibet early in the 20th century, to limit Russia’s influence and possible expansion into its empire, especially India, so this is not new. After the West working furiously to use Tibet and Taiwan to overthrow the CPC, starting in the 1950s, Hong Kong after 1997 and the South China Sea in the 2000s, all ongoing, it was only a matter of time before NATO would use its vast network of global proxy armies, posing as “true religion Islamisists”, to try to subvert China and its 25 million Muslim citizens.
Like the Western oligarchs’ tsunami of endless false flags and psychological warfare, the BLPM can brainwash most of the world’s people to believe absolutely anything they want promote, no matter how preposterous. Perception becomes mass induced delusions of “reality”, even though it is total fiction.
Based on experience, I know the truth. I have traveled throughout China’s Muslim regions and met many people. My family and I lived in a Muslim neighborhood in Beijing for four years. I have also written much about Islam in China
Biden’s UN Ambassador nominee, Linda Thomas-Greenfield has declared she is anxious to declare Xinjiang and its Muslims as victims of Sino-genocide, so nothing will change.
Baba Beijing, China’s leadership will do what I do: keep telling the truth and fighting the good fight against the West’s relentless and very efficacious global BLPM.
SS: Late in 2020, the world saw the tension between Beijing and New Delhi escalate from a political level to a military confrontation with losses on both sides. In your opinion, did the former US administration’s support of the Indian position contribute to the confrontation on the ground? Additionally, what is your take on the future of China-India relations?
JB: Like every other US administration since the Russian Revolution of 1917, or as Dr. Joan Roelofs likes to say, Since the beginning of the Cold War in 1848, with the publication of the Communist Manifesto. Western empire continues to work tirelessly to create alliances and ententes to destroy its many anti-global capitalist enemies. Trump’s “Quad”, which joins the US with India, Australia and Japan, is just one more of endless permutations throughout colonial-imperial history.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi started out in 2014 supporting the aforementioned Asian institutions. He is also a Hindu Nationalist; this segment of India’s population is generally rabidly Sinophobic. It may help explain why for the last couple of years, he has moved to stoke these sentiments in-country, to maintain popularity, while imposing more and more neoliberal policies, which are making a poor population even poorer.
In 2019, Modi pushed Hindu nationalism in the Sino-Paki-Indian tinderbox of Jammu-Kashmir-Jammu, so may have gotten some Western behind-the-scenes quid pro quo on all this. Or, like countless others, he could have simply succumbed to the imperial toolbox: bribery, blackmail and extortion. In any case, ongoing border tensions and banning China Tech (Huawei, ZTE, WeChat, TikTok, etc.) all keeps suffering Indian minds off the fact that neighbor China has completely outclassed them socio-economically, developmentally and geopolitically for the last 70 years.
While heavily censored, downplayed or misrepresented in the BLPM, India is currently dealing with human history’s largest popular protests, as hundreds of millions of citizens are on the march against Modi’s impoverishing, neoliberal policies. My Indian friends say they are organized for the long haul and are being financed by popular support.
Whether this may push India away from the Quad and back towards Asia is hard to say. Just this week, Modi’s Foreign Minister gave a surprising policy speech, which laid out cooperation with China, including three mutuals and eight propositions. It is highly unlikely that this was done without Modi’s approval.
We can speculate two ways. First, India is going back to the grand Asian project, with China and Russia. Or, Modi & Company are trying to leverage the Quad for more concessions, especially as a shot across the bow of the new Biden administration.
We’ll know more in the months to come, as India’s inspiring protests continue to rage on.
Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist
