1. I don't think people realize just how much the dovish perspective on China is coming from Wall Street and the desire to continue ensuring labor and manufacturers in the U.S. are subordinated to financiers.
2. "During the U.S.-China trade talks of 2018/2019, Stephen Schwarzman, head of Blackstone; Hank Paulson, ex-Treasury secretary/Goldman Sachs CEO; and John Thornton, ex-Goldman Sachs president, were key interlocutors between Wall Street, DC and Beijing."
politico.com/news/2020/05/2…
politico.com/news/2020/05/2…
3. Trump is a hawk on China, but only insofar as he can buck Wall Street. That happens, he did do tariffs, and there are things we can learn from how he operates. But his desire to boost the stock market and his ethno-nationalism makes him weak.
4. The left/neoliberals have the same view on China. The Quincy Institute, dedicated to stopping endless wars, is funded by Charles Koch, and boosts the World Trade Organization. Meanwhile here's Susan Rice promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. nytimes.com/2020/05/19/opi…
5. It's critical that the U.S. find a way to stop trading with China as quickly as possible, because our economic entanglement creates a drive for more war and nationalism. It also enables the Chinese government to undermine our liberties.
6. This is not a traditional hawkish stance, but a view that the economic control that the CCP exerts on us comes through Wall Street. What's weird is that noisy chunks of the left/neolibs can't see this dynamic and resort to flimsy ethno-nationalistic views of statehood.
6. Here's Fareed Zakaria attacking Biden's hawkishness and basically parroting the Quincy Institute line, failing to recognize that the liberal international order before the WTO and after the WTO is fundamentally different. washingtonpost.com/opinions/democ…
7. And Rice just doesn't want Biden talking about China at all, because it "makes governing more difficult and raises the prospect of a costly Cold War — or worse." nytimes.com/2020/05/19/opi…
8. Our 25 year-old economic and political entanglement with Chinese authoritarianism is a problem we're going to have to face as a society. The left and high level actors need to begin to internalize it's not going to be a quiet discussion anymore.
