China thinks Trump is a strategic genius

Discussion in 'Politics' started by traderob, Oct 7, 2018.

  1. traderob

    traderob

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    Trump has China quaking in its boots
    By Steven W. Mosher

    October 6, 2018 | 1:26pm | Updated


    [​IMG]
    The signs of Chinese retreat began with the softening of rhetoric on state media.AP
    With China still running a record trade surplus with the US, it seems premature — to say the least — to say that Trump has won his long-overdue trade war with China.

    But it is not too early to conclude that, despite their threat of retaliatory tariffs, China’s Communist authorities know that they have lost.

    The increased tariffs to date, combined with the threat of more, have already clipped the wings of China’s economic rise. Its stock market is down 21 percent year over year, industrial output is slowing and its currency is weakening.

    Looking beyond the bluff and bluster emanating from Beijing, there is evidence that Party leader Xi Jinping is looking for a way to stand down.

    Let’s read the Chinese tea leaves.


    In early July Xi ordered state-media outlets to tone down their rhetoric. “Self-deception and boasting will not bring about true self-confidence and pride,” the official Communist Party newspaper dutifully editorialized.

    This sudden modesty was a striking turnabout from five years of constant bragging — by none other than “Core Leader” Xi himself.

    Almost from the moment he took power in 2012, the Chinese leader was so confident that his own country’s rise was unstoppable, and so certain that America was in terminal decline, that he openly boasted about the China-dominated world to come.

    The Art of War has met The Art of the Deal. And The Art of the Deal has won.

    He even drew up a series of grandiose plans — China would dominate high tech by 2025, the Asia-Pacific region by 2035 and the world by 2049.

    Xi may try to blame his propaganda flacks for overdoing it, but the Chinese people know who is responsible. In backing off the braggadocio, Xi is “slapping his own face,” as the Chinese say.

    The Chinese state-run media has been busily throwing up a smokescreen to cover Xi’s retreat. It has launched increasingly unhinged attacks on what it calls the “lunatic,” “insane” and “terroristic” Trump administration.

    After all, the masses must be told who to blame for China’s recent economic difficulties.

    The official Global Times has even published an article calling for US administration officials to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump from office.

    In private, however, senior Chinese officials have come to view Trump as a Sun Tzu-like strategic genius.


    Yes, you heard me right.

    After the election, Xi Jinping tried to rope Europe and other Asian countries into a new, anti-US coalition, only to see this initiative fail.

    The EU recoiled from Xi’s embrace and is now in serious free and fair trade talks with Washington.

    Even the Philippines, which Xi tried desperately to woo with the promise of billions in investments, has now backed away from China.

    But as Xi was stumbling, Trump went on the offensive. He signed a new trade agreement with South Korea and expanded defense cooperation with Japan and Australia.

    Using the threat of tariffs as leverage, he even got Xi to agree to UN sanctions against North Korea, stifling the economy of China’s only formal ally.

    This week, with the successful renegotiation of a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada — the USMCA — Trump is now able to control China’s access to the entire North American market.

    Beijing officials now realize, even if many in the US foreign policy establishment don’t, that they are facing a master tactician, one who is moving steadily from deal to deal, getting as many concessions as he can, and then moving on the next.

    But they also see Trump as not just transactional, but strategic. He is pressuring China not just on the economic front, but on the military and ideological front as well. They fear that his goal is not just to rectify the trade deficit, but to eliminate the threat that a rising China poses to the US.

    The Chinese have been set on their heels by an American adversary who quotes Sun Tzu: “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

    The Art of War has met The Art of the Deal. And The Art of the Deal has won.

    Only the terms of the surrender remain to be negotiated.

    China is eager to resume talks but, as Trump said this week, he is in no hurry to reach a deal.

    I am pretty sure he means that China is not yet sufficiently subdued.

    Steven W. Mosher is the author of “Bully of Asia: Why China’s Dream is the New Threat to World Order.”
     
    Optionpro007 likes this.
  2. Chinese stocks fall almost 5% in market bloodbath as investors digest a week of bad news in a single day
    Will Martin

    3h
    [​IMG]
    A man at a brokerage house in Shanghai in 2010.
    REUTERS



    • Chinese stocks plunged Monday, with the China A50 index losing more than 4.8% in trading.
    • A weeklong holiday for Chinese markets meant investors had an entire five days of news and data to digest in just one session, including an escalation of the trade war between China and the US.
    • News also emerged over the weekend that China's central bank would cut the required reserve ratio for Chinese banks by 1%.
    • You can follow global market movements with Markets Insider.
    Chinese stocks took a hammering Monday as traders returned to work after a weeklong holiday in the world's second-largest economy.

    Losses on major indexes in mainland China were as high as 4.8% in a major market rout, with the China A50, which includes major companies from both the Shenzhen and Shanghai indexes, as the biggest loser. The Shanghai Composite lost 3.7% of its value, while the Shenzhen Composite was down just over 4% at the close of the day's trading.

    The reasons behind the crash are numerous but include Chinese investors' catching up to their Asian counterparts after a week of losses in Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea.

    The main driver, however, appears to be a failure from markets to believe that fresh stimulus from China's central bank, the People's Bank of China, will help prevent US President Trump's trade war from causing an economic slowdown in China. The PBOC cut its required reserve ratio for Chinese banks by 1% over the weekend.

    "Chinese investors were primarily reacting to a week's worth of news and data, and they have a lot to digest, including the prospect of a slowing and maturing economy and a bubbling trade dispute with the United States," Fiona Cincotta, a senior market analyst at City Index, said in an email.

    "China is moving towards a more mature economic model from the one that has driven its remarkable growth in the last 20 years and experiencing growing pains in the process," she added.

    The fall in Chinese equities comes just a few days after the US bank JPMorgan cut its outlook from overweight to neutral on the country's stock market as a result of the likely negative impact of the trade war on the country's growth.

    "China sectors such as energy, IT and industrials will be most impacted based on our analysis, while sectors such as real estate, insurance, diversified financials, telecom and utilities generate virtually no revenue from the US," a team led by Pedro Martins said in a note.
     
  3. vanzandt

    vanzandt

    This morning Cramer say's:
    "China may be Communist... but they sure do have a real world Capitalist bear market going on".
    :D
     
    Optionpro007 and fan27 like this.
  4. Art of The Blink ?

    Mike Pompeo says US trying to convince China ‘to behave like a normal nation’


    U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Wednesday the United States was engaged in a “multi-pronged effort … to convince China to behave like a normal nation on commerce” and respect international law after Washington indicted 10 Chinese nationals for stealing aviation secrets.

    Speaking in a radio interview, Pompeo called China’s behavior in stealing intellectual property “inappropriate” and “not consistent with being a superpower or a leader in the world.”

    “Stealing another country’s intellectual property, something China’s been engaged in to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, is just something China has to figure out a way to stop,” he told the Brian Kilmeade Show.

    Pompeo also told the Laura Ingraham radio show that over the long term, China was probably the biggest national security challenge facing the United States and the Trump administration was pushing back “on all fronts.”

    “Where the semiconductor piece fits in is it’s part of a mosaic of our strategic effort to push back against this continued Chinese effort,” he said.

    “It is a multipronged effort on behalf of all of the United States Government, at the President’s direction, to convince China to behave like a normal nation on commerce and with respect to the rules of international law,” he said.

    A U.S. indictment unsealed on Tuesday said Chinese intelligence officers conspired with hackers and company insiders to break into computer systems of private firms to steal information on a turbo fan engine used in commercial jetliners.

    It was the third major corporate espionage-related case involving Chinese intelligence officers brought by the Justice Department since last month and comes at a time when Washington is embroiled in a major trade war with Beijing.

    The United States and China have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods over the past few months, sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump’s demands for an end to alleged Chinese intellectual property theft, deep cuts to industrial subsidies, and action to correct a major U.S. trade deficit with China.

    Early this month, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence intensified Washington’s pressure campaign against Beijing by accusing China of “malign” efforts to undermine Trump ahead of next Tuesday’s congressional elections and reckless military actions in the disputed South China Sea, a major Asian trade route.

    China has rejected the charges.
     
    exGOPer likes this.
  5. China is dead wrong, he is a stable genius.